


parys von eiland's smile

by lowercasej



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, But Then 3H Already Canonically Has That So Uhhhhhhhhh, Byleth Is A Good Girl Please Do Not Assume Ill Intent From Her, Canon Compliant Weed, F/F, Gen, MLM/WLW Rivalry To Alliance, One-Sided Attraction, Technically There Will Be Fantasy Weed In This, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowercasej/pseuds/lowercasej
Summary: Parys is usually smiling. She likes smiling! Smiling always feels safe and right to do, and it seems to make other people smile, which she quite enjoys. Smiling, for her, is as natural as it is obvious; the way she sees it, being upbeat is how you find the right way to do things, and everyone else is strange for being so down in the dumps and not smiling so much.Her family did not agree with her on this. This, she feels, likely explained a lot of things that they did before the old man found her–along with the crest of Chevalier.Parys von Eiland/ pɛr-iz vɔn aɪ-lɔn /Date of Birth- The 25th of the Pegasus Moon, 1162Height- 199cmDefinition- A former commoner turned noble of extravagance. Known to most as the tall, long-haired woman with a smile on her face, known to few as the lesbian who is an endless disaster for danger, and known to herself as a broken mind whose lucky break makes as little sense as her emotions.
Relationships: Claude von Riegan & OC, My Unit | Byleth & OC, OC/Every Girl™
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Three things:
> 
> 1) This piece contains discussions of past abuse, both emotional and physical. It's no worse than the kinds of things said in the game, but I feel like it's worth pointing out anyways.  
2) You might wanna take that pronounciation of Parys' name up there and toss it into <http://ipa-reader.xyz/>. True to how the game itself does it, I have made sure that my OC's surname is to be said in a manner that sounds wrong, and also bad.  
3) The Pope gave Byleth fantasy weed and then told them to give the fantasy weed to the teenage students. Like, that's an actual thing, that she does, in the actual videogame. _How is that not a thing people constantly mention_

Looking through the small courtyard next to all the classrooms, Byleth’s eyes cross upon all the students standing and sitting around, waiting to discover who their new teacher might be. She’s still not quite sure what to make of this; while she doesn’t know her exact age, she feels confident that she’s about as old as everyone else here, and even though she’d certainly qualify as being much younger on a mental age scale, she is somehow expected to be a leader for them.

She supposes that she knows how to kill a man efficiently, so it’s not as if the source material for her teachings are out of her reach, but she assumes that she ought to know at least a little bit more about basic social contexts before she explains such things to normal people, who have yet to be desensitised to blood.

It’s probably why, then, she’s so attached to the Golden Deer House, as opposed to any other class. Not because everyone there is more mature as a group, but because at least one man there has an inkling of an idea of how to talk to others, and she can at least piggyback off of whatever he’s saying.

“So there’s also Hilda.” Claude’s giving his explanation of all of his new friends, making sure to pass off their many, many negatives as fun quirks, as they both enter the classroom. “She’s procrastinates quite a bit, to say the least. If you saw ‘lazy’ in the dictionary, she… probably wouldn’t be there, because she’d forget to send her photo in.”

“Oh.” Byleth’s eyebrows raise mildly, which, as far as Claude knows, is her only form of expression. “That would be rude of her to do that.”

Claude tries to stifle a giggle at the literal interpretation. Bringing her in to his class is probably the best thing he could do; not only does she have an incredible talent for combat, but she’s also incredibly impressionable and free of Fodlan’s usual biases. If he plays his cards right, maybe he’ll finally have someone with authority here who  _ doesn’t _ have some weird thing about the church! Truly, he’d find the holy grail with that one.

“And finally, there’s…” Claude gestures at a woman in the center of the class. “Well, I think you’ve probably already noticed her.”

Byleth tilts her head. “Notice who?”

“Wait, do you not seriously see her?” Claude points more obviously at the woman. “The tall one with the tacky dress!”

“ _ Not _ tacky.” The woman talks back with a smile and a softness that Byleth doesn’t think she’s ever heard before, calm yet demanding. “It’s  _ extravagant _ , thank you very much.”

“It’s extravagantly tacky!” Claude’s also smiling, leading Byleth to think this isn’t necessarily an angry argument. “How did the prudes running this place let you not wear stockings, anyways?”

“If you moan enough at faculty, they’ll let you go with anything, of course!” She does a small curtsy, emphasizing her attire, before she glances at Byleth. “Oooh, someone else with good taste. It seems Claude’s new friend here knows the secret, too!”

Byleth’s head only tilts harder. “What?”

“Just look at you, darling.” The woman walks closer, leaning down to look closely at her clothing. “The crop top, the shorts, the suit jacket you have so loosely and casually, and that  _ beeee-you-tiful _ pattern across your legs! That’s an  _ incredible _ aesthetic you have, miss.”

Byleth gets anxious for a moment, though it only shows in her eyebrows. “Do I really look that strange?”

“It’s a compliment, don’t worry about it.” Claude hushes the tall woman and pulls her back up. “Introductions?”

“Oh, of course!” She stands up straight upon realization. “Ahem. Parys Von Eiland, noble of extravagance–”

“–was actually a commoner until a few months ago, don’t be fooled–”

“AHEM.” Parys speaks loudly to quiet Claude, though her  _ loudly _ still seems very quiet in comparison to anyone else. “As I was saying. It will be a pleasure to be around you, friend.”

Now that Byleth has to actually pay attention to her for longer than three seconds, she does suppose that Parys is quite blinding next to all the students around her. It’s not even that she’s tall, though that certainly helps her; While she doesn’t come close to Raphael’s sheer bulk, she’s even taller than him, and barring that one fellow from Duscur she saw with the Blue Lions, she might be the tallest student here.

No, moreso, it’s everything else. The “tacky” dress Claude mentions is bright, an assortment of flower patterns so colorful that she would mistake it for stained glass, reds and blues on a dark, satisfying navy. Her dark hair is wavy and not just long, but  _ incredibly _ long, to the point where Byleth wonders how likely it would touch the ground if she were near anyone else’s height. Even her eyeglasses are bright, a pair of cat-eyes with a thin black frame, somehow complimenting both the dress and her own wide smile. If she didn’t still have some semblance of a student uniform, a jacket lazily thrown over the dress, she would almost take Parys for being a young teacher like her.

She’s also quite surprised by her legs, like Claude said, being noticeable in not just the soft paleness, but the sheer length of them. Parys even seems to add extra emphasis to her right leg in particular, always craned so they’re closer to the eye. Byleth wasn’t quite sure why the church’s faculty would want them covered, but now that she thinks about it, they  _ do _ give her a feeling like she needs to focus on them more. Perhaps she’s using them as a form of hypnosis? There is a library somewhere here, maybe Byleth ought to start looking these things up eventually–

“Uh, buddy?” Claude waves his hand in front of Byleth’s face, bringing her back to reality. “You alright there?”

“Clearly, she’s in shock at my elegance, Claude.” She does a little spin, her left foot doing all the shifting. “I’m a pretty woman, aren’t I?”

“Oh, come on, it’s not because you’re pretty.” Claude turns to Byleth. “Right?”

“Pretty.” Byleth looks to the ground, deep in thought. “Perhaps that’s what that is?”

Claude’s eyes immediately grow, in the way it only does when he discovers something really funny, and Parys giggles.

“Well, now!” Her hands quickly clasp together in enjoyment. “See, Claude? A fashionable genius, is what I am.”

Claude pretends to groan, but he’s really just hiding his laughter with his hand to his mouth. Byleth doesn’t really get what’s so funny about it, but she seems to have made everyone happy, so she doesn’t mind.

“Well, my friend, I hope the rest of your day goes well.” She takes her bow. “I don’t suppose you already know what you’ll be doing?”

“I need to tell the archbishop that I plan on teaching this class, of course.”

“Ah, well, if you ever want to have some tea or–wait.”

Parys suddenly freezes up realizing what Byleth said, but she doesn’t even give her time to voice her realization before running off, likely to decide on the class.

“I. B-but…”

“Congratulations, Parys.” Claude claps right next to her. “You’ve succeeded in getting your own teacher to crush on you in record time!”

“She’s my age!” Parys is still slightly smiling, but she’s clearly anxious about it, being red in the face. “I almost look older than her, even! How did–when did–”

“You know, maybe if you didn’t immediately hit on her  _ before _ I could explain that part, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“I wasn’t trying to hit on her, I was getting excited about good fashion!”

“Does your excitement usually end with asking someone out for tea?”

“Y-yes!” She absolutely got called out on that one, but it’s not like she’ll admit it. “Obviously, I’d enjoy the company of someone with like-minded aesthetic beauty, not like you’d know!”

She walks off awkwardly with a loud  _ humph _ , and Claude can’t help himself to not finally laugh. If nothing else, he thinks Parys might have guaranteed his new professor to join his side, even if it’s for reasons he, uh, might want to make sure doesn’t build to anything, what with all the power dynamics involved.

“Whatever you wanna tell yourself,” Claude chuckles under his breath. “Sheesh, ‘disaster lesbian’ doesn’t even begin to cut it.”

“ _ I HEARD THAT. _ ”

* * *

_ Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. _

She’s quite used to being in unfortunate situations in her lifetime, but this may very well be the first time that the danger comes socially and not physically. It’s one thing to be at the bad end of a pike prepared to spear itself directly into her, but to be in a scandal?  _ With her own teacher? _ Terrifying! Look, the Professor might look extremely adorable, and have a fantastic eye for topwear, and her belly might look really soft and muscley and now that she thinks about it that sounds like it would feel very nice to touch–

No! Nononono, cut that out, right this instant! Parys Von Eiland may be a disasterous homosexual of a woman, but a fool she is not! She did not escape the abusive grip of those with power just for her gay ass to trip right into another pair of soft, strong arms!

Besides, it’s not her fault! She didn’t even know! The Professor looks like a confused technically-adult who never got taught how to socialise, not a member of the church’s faculty! She just thought she was talking to another student! She definitely does not see her like that anymore! Or at least, erm, for the sake of her own safety, she’s definitely trying to!

Most importantly, she  _ definitely _ didn’t end up staring at her open abs for the entire first day of class while trying to push it away!

Definitely,  _ definitely _ not!

But then, is anyone going to believe her when she says that? Of course not, because that’s not how scandals work! Or at least, erm, that’s not how she  _ thinks _ scandals work. She’s read a lot of dramatic fiction with things like this, after all, school life and angst abound, and so she feels very confident that this might very go terribly for her!

Humph. She had a great plan sorted out when she first saw Byleth, too. The tea they would have had together! She was going to be so elegant and beautiful with her fancy rose petal blend! And instead, she’s sitting alone at the table, with a cup of tea that she’s getting too nauseous to drink from properly.

Claude’s a big jerk for not telling her sooner. Stupid Claude, with his jokery and not letting anyone in on his secrets and–

“Wow, how did the most talked-about girl in the academy manage to find some alone time?”

–and his ability to find people the moment he feels like it.

“What do you waaaaant.” Parys’ head is directly on the table, lazily on her side.

“Ooooh, you only  _ kinda _ have a smile this time!” Claude casually plops himself on the other side of the table, arms stretched behind him. “Guess that’ll be the closest thing to sad I’ll be seeing?”

“…Do I look sad?” Parys tilts her head up, lips in a confused upper curve.

Claude’s mind stumbles at that response. “Alright, guess the answer to my question was yes.”

Parys is usually smiling. She likes smiling! Smiling always feels safe and right to do, and it seems to make other people smile, which she quite enjoys. Smiling, for her, is as natural as it is obvious; the way she sees it, being upbeat is how you find the right way to do things, and everyone else is strange for being so down in the dumps and not smiling so much.

Her family did not agree with her on this. This, she feels, likely explained a lot of things that they did before the old man found her–along with the crest of Chevalier.

“How did trying to explain the scandal to Teach go?”

“She was  _ quite _ sympathetic, thank you very much.” Parys tries to sip her tea, before it gets too cold. “It was a simple misunderstanding, was all. She just happened to have a very specific focus on me.”

“On your legs?”

Parys’ eyelid twitches. “On my legs, yes.”

While there were always rumors that the crest’s bloodline simply hid in the shadows, nobody would have ever expected that it could be found through the child of a trader–a child that, in Parys’ mind, might as well have been adopted, because nobody else in that family bore even a slight resemblance to her. It was pure luck even finding the old man, as he just happened to be passing by a market deep in Alliance territory when her mother was screaming at her for still smiling after all her gold was pickpocketed.

He’s nothing if not knowledgeable, though. Apparently, smiling against all odds is the most obvious symptom of one bearing this crest, and he instantly recognized it in her. One look through his strange irradiated device, and sure enough, there it was, a bright sun-looking symbol apparently attached to her. As he had put it to her, that smile of hers was the very thing that saved her.

That smile of hers was the reason she’s suffered for so long, the very thing that keeps her up at night out of fear she’ll see her family again in her dreams, the reason that her leg is…

Well. Best to try and push that thought away for now. The last thing Claude needs to see is one of the few times she won’t smile.

“So, more importantly to the matter.” Claude leans in close and whispers. “Did you hear Hanneman’s trying to get a skin biopsy of you?”

“A skin  _ what _ ?”

“Like he cuts off a bit of it to look at.”

“Wh–” She sits up violently in shock. “ _ Absolutely not. _ ”

Claude just cackles. “Hey, I’m just the messenger, don’t look at me.”

Besides, it’s not like Claude hasn’t already seen far too much for her personal preference. He’s good enough at finding little secrets out, and that Hanneman mutters to himself constantly makes that fact even worse. He even managed to take a peek at her room and find all of her  _ extremely allowed thank you very much but please don’t tell Seteth _ female-centric romance material strewn about her desk! Nobody was supposed to see that! She’s incredibly lucky that he doesn’t seem all that in favor of authority, because otherwise she’d probably already be splayed on some torture device for all the sins she’s commited.

“He’s really creepy about that stuff, honestly.” Claude leans on his chair, dangerously close to falling back. “I even saw the professor having to constantly turn him down, and she hasn’t been here all that long.”

“He’s…” Parys tries to pick her words carefully. “He means well, at least. I wouldn’t be here without him.”

“All I’m saying is, how well can the guy mean?” Claude leans back forward, like he’s trying to hide a secret. “He only brought you here for your crest, right?”

“I  _ just so happened _ to have a crest, was all.” Is the story Parys was told to give everyone.

“Oh, c’mon, that can’t be true.” Claude’s getting a bit more hushed in his tone. “A commoner nobody’s ever heard of before from a poor town, suddenly getting a scholarship at a school that requires buckets of gold to get into, and you expect me to believe that you  _ coincidentally _ have something he’d want?”

Parys tried to hide her panic behind a cup of tea. “It’s quite fortunate, isn’t it.”

Of course nobody knows who she is; up until about four and a half months ago, there was never any record of a woman named Parys Von Eiland. It was part of the deal she struck with him, to conceal her identity from her family in order to best hide from them, and seeing how that teenager with a commoner’s name she once was looked so wildly, incredibly different from the beautiful woman she is now that even Claude can’t crack her true past, it worked wonders. She even got up a new surname for her nobility, since there wasn’t anyone to talk back to her, which is nothing short of incredible.

“Look, I don’t want to pry too hard or anything–”

“–and yet, you choose to regardless–”

“–but, and I want to emphasize that this doubles as a compliment, you stick out way too hard for you to have no past I can find!” Claude’s got that  _ my need to figure shit out overrides all empathy _ face again, oh dear. “I thought it was maybe just because of all that inheritance you’d have gotten letting you get more clothing, but I’m pretty sure you could wear a rucksack and you’d still be like this!”

“Is this  _ your _ attempt at hitting on me?” Parys’ eyebrow raises.

“ _ Do you think I don’t know what a lesbian is!? _ ”

…

He just amplified that message to every other person in yelling distance, a problem made worse by his sudden standing up and awkwardly sitting back down.

He really just had to bring more attention to her, didn’t he, right after she’d been panicking for so long. Of course he did, of course he’d do all of that, mocking her for the only clothing she felt comfortable in, and constantly begging her to reveal all her trauma, and having the  _ absolute audacity _ to shame her for thinking someone is pretty, and then him making that someone look at her–

_ Parys’ eyelid twitches. _

“You know what? Since you’re so keen on this, I suppose I ought to do so in return.” Parys calmly sits up, moving closer to him. “Would you like a hint, Claude?”

Claude’s face suddenly goes to a worrisome terror. “Uh. Oookay?”

“Do you remember the first day the Professor was here, and you had brought so much attention to my legs?”

Visible sweat is dripping from his face.

“Y-yeah?”

She moves next to his ear, and from what he sees, she has a terrifying look on her, the face of a raw, unbridled sadist, smile still wide but with eyes that could eat men alive just on contact.

“ _ Never do that again. _ ”

And with that, Parys walks off, as the courtyard remains silent.


	2. Chapter 2

“So, when I got the poor guy up to the library, I tried doing my bit where I pretend to have trouble lifting a book.”

“Mhm.” Claude’s in the middle of enjoying his chamomille tea.

“And you know what happened?” Hilda leans over the courtyard table, whispering. “He offered to clean that whole place up for me on the spot! I didn’t even have to do any baby eyes, and he was all over me.”

“Yeesh. How many of these kinds of old stories do you even have, anyways?”

“‘Old’?” Hilda snickers. “That was something I did _this lunchtime._”

“Hilda, it’s lunchtime right now.”

Hilda nods.

“…You were already here only a few minutes after the bell rang.”

Hilda nods even harder.

Claude’s eyes widen. “You’re kidding me.”

“I only kid when it helps me.” She winks. “I have _powers_ over all the other men here, Claude.”

By all accounts, given the things Claude wants to stand for, Hilda should be seen as nothing less than the devil. She is, in no particular order: a daughter of the family overseeing Fodlan’s Locket, the bottleneck keeping Fodlan as closed in the literal sense as it is in the minded one, a crest loving pale-skinned noble whose never had a hard day in her entire life, and someone who actively takes advantage of her status by manipulating others, nobles and commoners alike, to suit her own gain.

To be completely honest, he’s surprised she hasn’t turned out to be another racist in the ever-growing unthinking mass of Fodlan’s racists, but the fact that she hasn’t so far is probably why he doesn’t mind her so much. A lot of people here get really weird about his whole half-Almyran thing, whether that’s through an irrational hatred or a _really_ uncomfortable fetishizing enjoyment, but for the most part, Hilda started off by trying to trick him into doing work for her like any other man she meets, and when he saw right through it, she chilled out quickly–and now, only a week into the actual school year, they just kind of became friends without much effort.

It doesn’t hurt that she also has a utility he could make good use of. Everyone’s already starting to call him an untrustworthy schemer (and, to be fair, there’s about a half dozen poisons in his dorm room that wouldn’t help his case), but Hilda? Hilda’s been tricking people into doing all the work for years, and people still bend over backwards for her like she’s done no wrong! Maybe the trick is to be stubborn with the disguise like she has, maybe the trick is just that she has all the privilege she needs to never face consequences, but regardless, it’s a skill of hers that he could absolutely take advantage of, if need be.

“Do you think he’ll be done fast enough for you to not get in trouble for it?”

“Oh, of course not!” Hilda’s downed her tea with the subtlety of a mercenary holding a pint of liquor. “He’s around my height, and he was trying to climb up the shelves! Little guy’s going to get into _so_ much trouble when the staff finds him covered in tomes.”

Also, listening to stories about nobles getting tricked and fooled is totally up his alley. He’s been through enough shit in his lifetime to be allowed to make fun of a few rich men, don’t take this from him.

“So.” Hilda has now entered her gossip mode, elbows right on the table. “Did’ya find anything new about Miss Tall?”

…Okay, actually, given what he has to tell her in return, maybe he _should_ have it taken away from him–but for now, letting her in on some secrets is part of the plan.

“Not really?”

“No lying, meanie.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault anyone who’d know about her past is so tight-lipped!” Claude holds his hands up in defense. “You know what, if we’re getting so accusatory, why do you even care, anyways?”

“Because, I want to know what it is that got her whole fashion sense to be so good!” Hilda pouts. “I’m losing my sway with some of the men thanks to her.”

_If you just asked, she’d probably beg you to take them away from her_, Claude thinks internally.

He’s technically not lying to her, since the old man really refuses to indulge in even the slightest thing related to her, and that’s a big deal, because usually if you let him talk about crests for long enough, he’ll just let anything loose. What Claude has found, however, is a lot of research notes on her, though all it’s done so far is creating more questions for him. Some of it’s interesting information; there’s a lot of historical anecdotes of how those with the Chevalier crest were notorious for their raw _warmth_, emotionally and literally. It would certainly line up with how she can’t seem to _not_ smile, and it’s also validating to know that he wasn’t losing his mind when she was single-handedly making him sweat out a small pond whilst being threatened all up-close.

But then, there’s a lot of things that doesn’t match up, most importantly of which is the constant references to a family of hers. Wasn’t she signed up to this school as an orphan? In fact, every single official record he’s found of her, even in the signing of her to inherit the old house’s wealth, assumes she was the only one left in the bloodline to possibly get the title.

And why _did_ she respond to that thing about her legs the way she did? That’s a specific thing to get tense about, isn’t it? There’s no scarring on her, since she wouldn’t be so showy about them if there was, and both her legs work fine–a little bit of exaggeration to her steps, sure, and she sure likes to crane a leg up all the time like she’s a flamingo given human form, but it’s nothing more exaggerated or odd than the rest of her, and she’s definitely not walking on a limp given the acrobatics she can manage. Especially since she mentioned it alongside her anger over his digging about crests, would it somehow be related to that? Does whatever happened there have relevance with the fact that she seems to want as little connection to her old family as possible? Whatever it is, even the old man’s writing refuses to talk about it.

Not like he’s too keen on directly asking her about it again, though. He saw how terrifying the girl was with a lance first-hand at the mock battle; he’s pretty sure Teach only put her in because she was worried by the lack of combat history Parys seemed to have, but when ol’ Ferdinand Von Aegir waltzed up to her on the field thinking she’d be an easy target, the poor guy was out within _seconds_ with how easily she tore him apart. Either she just coincidentally had a natural talent that outperformed lance users who’d been training since they were children, or she’s been doing this for longer than she’d admit.

He’s sitting next to her in class, and she thankfully does talk to him with a reserved kindness, like she doesn’t want to use his head as a fun decorative item to hang up during parties, so he’s just gonna make sure it stays that way for now.

“Claaaaaude.” Hilda’s now decided that the table is her new resting spot, chest plopped down and all. “You’re doing that thinking-too-hard thing again.”

“Just, uh, trying to piece together what we already know.” Claude’s apparently been spacing out for a bit, whoops. “Those kinds of places always had hired guards that needed to be trained, right? Maybe I’m just overcomplicating it.”

“Guards don’t know how to look pretty, dummy!”

“Can’t always rely on stereotypes, Hilda.” Claudes wags his finger at her. “Sometimes, it really can be as simple as a pretty lady–”

“–WANTING TO FIGHT!? HUH!?”

“Well, I guess you _do_ have a point–wait.”

…Someone from the cafeteria area seems to have finished his sentence.

Hilda sits up straight in realization. “Hang on, was that the guy I stood up at the library?”

* * *

_Why are men like this._

Parys is a very simple girl, at heart. No need to overcomplicate her; all she wants is a nice bit of aesthetical food or beverage she can indulge in, and a woman she can make smile, while that woman occasionally compliments her taste in clothing. It doesn’t even necessarily have to go any further than that, though she’d be lying if she didn’t internally scream in happiness the few times it does. This is a world where women do not get to be happy on their own terms for long enough, and if Parys Von Eiland can use her privilege to extend that by one moment further, she will be consider that a job well done.

And it was a job she was in the midst of doing quite well, too. Dorothea Arnault is a woman who, she learned, never has even a second of time on her own, as if she was not impressing a man through her singing career and general beauty, she was flirting with one in order to get his money, a task she cannot blame her for doing. If Parys was in that same position, would she not do the same to ensure her survival? She presumes Dorothea could likely have a more, erm, _genuine_ enjoyment of men than she does, but nonetheless, they would both be attempting to court the kind of man they couldn’t stand. Dorothea, then, is the very kind of woman Parys would want to help, and being able to see an actual, honest comfort beaming from the girl’s smile filled her with joy.

“Dorothea! What’re you doing with this lady?”

So, naturally, they have to be interrupted. Apparently, hell hath no fury like a angry man who realizes that the women near him aren’t revolving around him.

“We are _eating_.” Dorothea, regrettably, has her fake smile back on, speaking calmly and quietly. “You see, when two people enjoy each other’s company very much–”

“Not what I meant!” The small cyan-haired boy interrupting them, however, has decided that volume control is for cowards. “Don’t you know this lady? She’s a creep! A bonafide stalker?”

“A stalker?” After all the time for these rumors to settle in, the accusations against Parys have gotten so absurd that she doesn’t even get all that anxious about it anymore. “That’s a new one. Did that short-haired brunette from your class come up with that as well, Dorothea?”

“She must be getting pretty desperate if she’s going for that.” Dorothea giggles, still looking at the boy. “I suppose you’re going to try and save the damsel in distress?”

“Yes! Duh! Obviously!”

“I do apologize, Caspar, but you’ll be disappointed to hear that there’s only one person I need saving from right now, _and it happens to be a boy._”

“Wait, there is?” Caspar looks around. “Is there an accomplice to this creep, or what?”

Parys’ smile is calm, taking in the silliness. “Not the brightest mind in the world, is he.”

“Well, he is trying his best.” Dorothea sighs. “Sorry, hon, but I think I can handle myself well enough to deal with the creepy stalker girl for a while longer. Trust me?”

“Of course not!” The boy puffs his chest up, which is extra-hilarious given how absolutely miniature he is. “You might not know the danger you’re in, but _I do!_”

Eurgh. Perhaps she needs to do something about this.

“I ought to make the request, then.” Parys stands up, immediately towering over the boy. “I understand that you may not understand this, but as a general rule, _you don’t talk over a woman like you know better._”

“Don’t lie to me!” His face grows redder by the second. “Lady, I’ve already had one woman who didn’t know anything ditch me today! I know dumb when I see it!”

Dorothea’s jaw muscle twitches at the implication of that comment, and Parys thinks she might need to shut him up a tad more quickly.

“Do you, now?” She stares him down, smile intact. “Because I don’t think if you were a clever kind of youth, you’d be trying to match up someone who outsizes you, boy.”

“_Boy!?_ You think I’m just some kid?”

“Well, if you aren’t, I’d certainly feel bad for whatever growth spurt you had.” She emphasizes with her hand to compare their heights. “Is it possible you were even shorter than this before?”

“Grrrrrrr!” The lid begins to blow off his tiny, tiny head, as he clenches his fists. “You think you can take me, lady? YOU WANTING TO FIGHT!? HUH!?”

_Sigh._ Men always get so easily riled by her, too. At one point, when it was her own significantly older blood relatives trying to tear her apart as a child, her accidental setting off of men seemed like such a horrible curse, but now it’s honestly pretty great, because she needs some way to let off steam after the mess her entrance to the public has been thus far, and this gives her quite the avenue.

“All right, then.” Parys stands back calmly. _“Try me.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this had to be split into two chapters because i wrote too many damn words


	3. Chapter 3

Caspar quickly rushes forward. He’s clearly been more focused on hand to hand combat, because his stance is quite good for how hot-headed he’s getting, but that won’t help him when he’s this emotional. From Parys’ experience, only the people who’ve been fighting for a long time are allowed to get away with anger; an old man with decades of experience might even be able to take advantage of such high reaction speeds that adrenaline can allow, but a young boy _only_ has reactions, and with no knowledge of what he needs to react to, he might as well be begging to take a quick nap.

So, he’ll pick a side to approach from. Seems like he’s opting to rush to her right! Alas, he’s probably fancying himself to look very smart, so Parys naturally throws a kick from her left side…

** _THUMP_ **

Which immediately caps the boy in the shin, dropping his head into easy knockout range without much effort, and continuing to prove Parys’ theory that teenage boys don’t really know how to do anything other than the most basic of weaves. Now, all she has to do is line up her knee, swing her right leg into the direction of his jaw…

** _CRAAAACK_ **

Aaaaand he’s gone. Plopped onto the ground, eyes closed, not moving. She may or may not have broken something, which is certainly not preferable, but the execution landed as well as it needed to be.

How long did that take, five seconds? She knows she ought to not feel too bad, since this dolt felt like terrorizing no less than three different women today, but there is absolutely no way that poor boy won’t be horribly demoralized once he wakes back up.

Behind her, however, she hears murmurs and bickering.

_“Caspar’s out already?” “Did you just see that?” “How was she able to…?”_

Oh, right. Most of the other students wouldn’t know that this is a thing she knows how to do, would they? No wonder they’re all staring at her.

Actually, erm, now that she thinks about it, there sure is a lot of people staring at her, far more than she’d think would be crammable into this tiny little area. Were there this many people in the cafeteria before? Did this sad little child have friends she needs to be worried about? Don’t get her wrong or anything, she’s used to this sort of situation for reasons she may not want to admit, but–

“Parys, t-that was…”

–usually, _not in front of the people she cares about very deeply_.

“Alright, erm, I can explain myself–”

“THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!” Dorothea beams up, immediately clinging to the taller girl’s arm. “How did you do that? You have to teach me, it would’ve made dealing with some of these jerks so much easier!”

Oh. Oh! Oh, hang on, she likes it?

In fact, she isn’t really hearing anyone mad at her at all, simply an ensemble of laughter and cheering. Some of the male students in the back are pumping their fists up in the air, thoroughly entertained by what they had just witnessed, and most of the women are silently giggling at how much of a fool Caspar ended up looking like. Parys might have been an antisocial menace up until recently, but she’s confident that this isn’t what a riled up crowd looks like.

“OhhhhhhhhHHHHHHH _WOW_ THAT WAS COOL!”

And, er, now the pink-haired girl from her own class is praising her, apparently?

“Um.” She really has no idea how to handle this. “Yooooou’re welcome?”

“He’s totally right, you _are_ a pretty girl who can kick ass!” Hilda’s eyes beam up, smile wide to the point of cartoonishness, as she just casually grips into the torso area of Parys’ dress. “No wonder I keep hearing so many good things about you!”

Wait, good things? People have been saying good things? She’s mostly heard the nasty stuff! Since when had anyone been calling her anything beyond a nasty predator, or a dangerous freak, or a horrible blasphemous demon who’ll take everyone’s kids and–

And then, while looking around in confusion, she glances at the doorway that one Claude Von Reigan is leaning into. The man grins quietly with his thumbs up, and that _he_ Hilda mentioned suddenly clicks to her.

There is a non-small chance, Parys thinks, that the two extremely happy, smiling women extremely close to her beating heart was a direct result of Claude’s meddling. Is this his version of apologizing? Is this just a side effect of his meddling for other reasons?

Perhaps she was being a tad rude to him. He seems like a man who means well, if nothing else.

Well, regardless, it seems that she’s the center of attention to a satisfied audience, so she ought to let the extrovert hiding in her roam for a little bit. Let bygones be bygones, and let Parys feel genuinely proud for a change, standing tall against stubbornness of man!

_CRK–_

Actually, you know what? She doesn’t have to stand tall, her usual kind of standing’s perfectly fine! Parys Von Eiland has no need for such arbitrary things like standing on both legs, thank you very much. Who would need to do such things when the bare leg being high up enough for all the women to focus at results in such _style_?

…Ahem. She’ll deal with her knee later.

* * *

Claude wasn’t actually expecting things to work out so well.

Well, okay, he did try to push some more positive rumors into the school consciousness. After all, one of the big reasons he was even digging into her past in the first place was to find out things he could slip out to Hilda, who would then circulate it to other gossipers, because imagine the murmured secrets that you could get out of the theoretical graceful mercenary she could have been, who never let her raw technique and ability give any compromise to her beauty! The sheer fairytale heroism of it! That would overwhelm any negative surrounding her with ease.

Plus, it was kinda his fault that the more nasty rumors had started. The least he could do is scheme his way back to a more neutral state.

But holy shit did it work far better than he expected. She got the star diva of the entire school to stick with her, when she’s usually the one calling out all the creeps! Not only that, she got to prove how she’ll defend such a girl against enraged noblemen right in front of everyone’s eyes! Everyone, from the students around her praising her, to the faculty that opted to punish Caspar instead, to _the archbishop herself_ who commended her for ending the conflict so quickly, to even that creepy brunette with the eyebrows from Black Eagles who started the awful rumors in the first place–all of them had to concede to her greatness.

No longer did Garreg Mach contain Miss Tall, teacher-seducing predatorial creep. Instead, they now get to bear witness to the glory of Parys Von Eiland, a guaranteed future knight of Seiros, a protector of women everywhere, and blinding enough for even the most emotionless of people to stare in awe. He might have tripped his way into this happy ending, but hey, the job’s done, no more need for him to try and find out her secrets!

He doesn’t need to. He definitely doesn’t want to, and he definitely hasn’t had to spend way too much willpower during the month after that event stopping himself from going back into Hanneman’s office.

_Definitely_ not.

…Wow, he sucks at lying to himself. Okay, yeah, he totally tried to steal Hanneman’s keys like three days ago, but he has a feeling that if he gets any further into the mystery, he’s going to find things he doesn’t like. Absolutely nobody would believe him if he said it out loud, but Claude does have moral standards for these things, and when he gets a bit too deep into someone’s personal life, he ends up feeling really gross afterward, like he just destroyed someone’s hopes and dreams.

It’s fine, though, since he has so many other questions on his mind. There’s the matter of Teach, and why she was thrusted into such a high position when she needs to be explained how most people get sad when they lose critical things they care about, and then there’s her father, who mysteriously vanished decades ago and was either neglectful or intentionally hiding his child from the truth, and then there’s the matter of who the hell Seiros and the Goddess really are, since Tomas, the librarian, has been casually slipping him historical evidence that they might have not necessarily been associated with a human species. If nothing else, his secret-digging hobby isn’t one that lets him get bored.

Right now, however, he needs to experiment with some fun new mixtures. Stomach poisons are always his best friend for any scheme he’s planning; he ideally doesn’t want to _kill_ anyone, so the stronger stuff is a no-go, but if an evildoer were to, say, eat a food containing a bit of tainted olive oil two days before they’re expected to do something evil, and that someone then can’t make it to the terrorrism-adjacent event they were so pumped to do, well that would just be really convenient, wouldn’t it? A fantastic thing to keep in your back pocket, at the very least.

So, off to the infirmary at night he went. They like hiding all the fun stuff here, and he respects how they put it in a room with few escape opportunities because it means they’ve at least considered that someone like Claude would pull this, but he’s already gone through each and every container, shelf and drawer this room has without a peep, so he knows exactly where he needs to be.

He just needs to open up the highest drawer, steal some of the laxative they have cooped up in these bottles, and…

Out in the halls, a large door creaks loudly open, and Claude’s gut instinct immediately kicks in to make sure he doesn’t get caught. Glancing around, there’s not much for him to hide with, but the sheets for the sole bed in here are loose enough to be hanging down to the floor, which seems like it might be a good hiding place, but hopefully whoever’s here doesn’t need to come near–

“Can’t believe I have to do this at this hour.”

Well, that sure does sound like a scowling Manuela, so the infirmary is definitely the intended destination. Claude quickly slides himself under the bed, hoping these sheets he’s peeking out of aren’t too see-through.

Of all the other people, she’s with Parys, smiling calmly. “Well, you can’t disobey the archbishop.”

“I sure can’t, can I.” Manuela has a bit of a drawl, making Claude guess that she was trying to get sloshed before being interrupted for this. “Why is she so steadfast about you, anyways?”

“Perhaps she just enjoys a woman who can win at hand to hand combat?”

“Oh, like she sees you as some knockoff Seiros. Ugh.”

Manuela opens up a cupboard, where all of the exotic, possibly-illegal-depending-on-the-town herbs are contained. He knew that stuff was rare enough to where even a little bit being gone would’ve raised alarms, so he never touched it, but he never knew it was so important that it belonged to none other than Lady Rhea.

Sheesh, that Pope’s got a _lot_ of different herbs stockpiled. Did she really give Parys permission to go through it? And now that he thinks about it, why does she need any of this?

“So.” Manuela casually unrolls the big blanket covering them onto the bed, sachels of each kind of herb sprawled about. “Take your pick.”

“T-there’s different kinds?” Parys leans on the wall with her patented one leg up, holding a confused smile.

“Of course!” Manuela’s drunk ass immediately transitions to giggling excitedly, like the kind of woman who probably knows a little bit too much about this sort of thing would. “Why, this one’s known to give you a bit of a confidence boost, and if you put this one in the proper pipe, it can help you calm down after a stressful day–”

“I do apologize, but am I allowed to ask for a specific kind?”

The older woman looks annoyed. “Oh?”

“I simply need one that can… relieve pain.”

Wait.

Claude’s about to find out why she needs any of this, isn’t he.

_Oh no._

Manuela takes a closer look at the girl, scrutinizing a specific place that Parys deeply wishes she’d stop looking at. “How much pain relief do you need?”

“What’s the strongest I can get?”

“Strong enough to numb a horse.”

Parys stares down the floor, dangerously close to where Claude is looking back. “That will do, yes.”

_Damn it Manuela please don’t let me know why I’m begging you._

Manuela groans, picking up the sachel and making sure to check it off the list of used-up herbs on the cupboard. “You’re lucky you got the highest authority possible to ask for this.”

“I appreciate your help, Professor–”

“First things first, however.” Manuela holds the bag away from reaching distance. “I want you to know that this isn’t a substitute for resting your body. Don’t think I don’t know why you’d want this.”

_Oh no she knows whyyyyyy Manuela what the FUCK_

The younger girl’s forehead starts dripping with sweat. “Well, I don’t exactly plan on kneeing any more people in the face all that often, but I appreciate the concern–”

“You’re very well aware I’m not talking about that, don’t lie to me.”

This is what he’s been trying to _not_ know! This is exactly what he’s been avoiding for the past month!

Manuela’s face grows more accusatory, leaning close to the girl, and if Claude weren’t terrified of making noise through any movement, he’d keep his ears shut.

“I’ve been dealing with stubborn liars like you for a while, you know.” Manuela stares the taller woman dead in the eyes. “And last I checked, kneeing a single idiot in the jaw wouldn’t have _broken your leg_ in the way it obviously had before.”

Parys’ whole body freezes up, and Claude’s head starts spinning.

“Look, I’m not going to tell anyone, even if it’s clear as day that this healed improperly ages ago, because you obviously don’t want anyone to know.” Her voice gets deeper, grumbling. “There’s not much else that can be done after such a long time, so I won’t push anything else on you, and I’m not a judgemental snob like some of my fellow teachers, so you can have as much of this as you need.”

Manuela looks closer into her eyes.

“But know this. You keep trying to hide it with this, and you keep using that leg like nothing ever happened, it’s going to keep buckling, and buckling, until…”

Manuela makes a loud _BANG_, smashing her fist into the wall and startling Parys enough for her to nearly fall down.

“…it snaps too hard for anyone to fix, and you never walk again.” Manuela doesn’t let her gaze move away. “I’ve already seen enough people in my lifetime destroy their bodies because they can’t admit they need to stop. _Don’t add to that list for me._”

She can only nod silently–and for the first time he’s ever seen, there’s no smile on her to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "lore-compliant marijuana" has the same number of symbols as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. i just wanted someone to know that
> 
> anyways how about that trauma


	4. Chapter 4

Taking a small sip from her cup of Albinean berry blend, Bernadetta Von Varley stares down at the table, terrified to make any sort of eye contact to the significantly taller woman in front of her.

Not that Parys can blame her, of course; the poor girl’s past isn’t much of a secret to anyone with ears, since she’d often scream them out loud in the middle of her own dorm room, and even the few things she could piece together from that is more than enough for her to sympathize. After a point, through all the conversations she’s had with her peers, it feels like _most_ of the people in this academy have either had a terrible family, or no family at all. Not a particularly positive sign, especially when so many of the worst examples, herself included, seem to belong to more crest-weilding folks than not.

“I’M SORRY!”

Parys stops herself from sipping her own cup to tilt her head. “For what?”

“I-I’m supposed to be talking, aren’t I?” The purple-haired girl keeps stuttering, tears in her eyes. “This is a socializing thing! And here I am, sitting like some child and drinking my dumb baby’s tea without a peep! Stupid Bernie, stupid stupid–”

“If I may?”

The girl yelps, sitting up straight, but still while looking away. “Yes! Sorry!”

“I apologize for interrupting you, but I would like to make something clear.” Parys grins calmly. “Tea is not necessarily for socializing.”

“I-it’s not?”

“A good cup of tea is, first and foremost, to calm oneself down with.” She keeps her voice on the quieter side, so as to not startle her again. “To talk with a trusted peer while you do so is mostly optional, something else to make it easier.”

Bernadetta fiddles with her hands. “What if the talking’s really hard for me?”

“Then you don’t need to talk if you don’t want.”

Bernadetta finally looks up, and her muscles seem to relax quickly. “O-okay.”

It is the Blue Sea Moon, a little over two months into the school year, and while there was quite some rockiness in getting to this place, especially given some certain things said by one very rude physican, _finally_, after eighteen long years of pain and discomfort, Parys Von Eiland feels like she’s in a comfortable place.

Even after the turning point at the cafeteria, she was worried people would misjudge her; while she didn’t know many things about the world outside her dingy little town, she knows that the kind of folk who only ever smile in all the fiction she enjoyed are the kind associated with having some dark, horrible personality, which is something she would deeply appreciate not ever being compared to.

But instead of that, people have just… trusted her. There were a few stragglers here and there, with one blonde pegasus knight from the Blue Lions in particular trying to loudly accuse her of “breaking the traditions of the royal families” (_Such a poor girl_, Parys thought at the time–even once she had managed to calm her down in front of a nice warm cup of mint tea, she couldn’t stop mumbling in a panic over the noblemen she’s expected to be married off to), but all Parys needed to do was sit them down and have a chat, and it all seemed to solve itself.

Bernadetta is one of the last few to mistrust her in this sense. Her worries are far more straightforward than most; she is a small, terrified girl trained to hide from all danger, and Parys is a giant who can kill a man within seconds of spotting him. An understandable fear, but one she would like to quell before things get too overwhelming.

“Um.” The poor girl keeps trying to make herself say something. “D-do you like the tea?”

“Of course!” Parys leans more into the visuals of a tea than the taste, but Albinean berry tea does have a very nice shade of red to it. “I must admit, I wasn’t expecting you to brew any for me.”

“Well, I _do_ know how to brew tea, it’s just…” She trails off, in that manner that seems almost dissociative, looking off to the distance before her gaze snaps back. “You’re not just lying to me, right? Did I really do a good job?”

“It’s a pleasant change of pace for me to not handle the tea for once, and I must say it was handled expertly.” Parys leans forward slightly, smiling wider. “You did very well, Bernadetta.”

She hides a small smile on her face, along with some redness in her cheeks. “Ehehehe.”

Ah, there it is! She thought little Bernadetta would be far harder to make happy, but it seems her natural talent has yet to hit its plateau, and now there’s one more smiling girl out there in the world than there was before.

She’s not a fool, and she more understands _why_ people never seem to be as happy as her, but that’s why being able to do things like this gives her so much joy. Even if nobody else smiles like she does, the least she can get out of the world is to let people be comfortable enough to smile as closely as they can.

_RUSTLE RUSTLE_

“Eep!” Oh dear, Bernadetta got herself startled again. “M-monster in the bush!”

“I have a feeling there’s no monster there, no.” Parys’ jaw tightens, knowing precisely what’s going on. “Excuse me, Bernadetta, but could you muffle your ears for a moment?”

“Oh? Um, okay.”

She puts her hands on each side of her head, and Parys calmly breathes in.

_ **“CLAUDE.”** _

He rolls out of the bush.

“Uh.” He’s sweating heavily, something that seems to happen quite often whenever she tries talking to him. “Guilty as charged?”

“For the love of–” Parys sighs, pinching her nose. “Could you please not do this while I’m with the most anxious student in this school? You nearly gave her a panic attack.”

“In my defense, I was _trying_ to listen in on one Miss Eisner.” He sweeps off all the twigs and leaves stuck onto him. “There’s only so many bushes here and I had a one-in-four chance to get the one closest to her, sue me.”

“I’ll just settle with shaming you, since embarrassment seems to be a weakness of yours.” Parys gestures him away. “Go on, now. I have new friends to talk to.”

“Yeah, yeah, sheesh.” He stands himself up, and slouches off in defeat.

“You can stop, Bernadetta.” Parys taps on her shoulder, slightly startling her but still knowing she should move her hands.

“Um um um um.” She seems to be some mixture of angry and afraid, strangely enough. “Who was that? Did you find some stalker in there? Do you need to fight them? If you need to fight them I’m actually pretty good at that, Professor Hanneman said I was good at killing–”

“I appreciate the offer, but no.” Parys calms her down, though now she’s a bit worried about where that girl was trailing off to. “Claude gets shooed away easily enough, I find.”

“Wait, does Claude usually do this?” Alright, _now_ she’s doing more of an angry pout. “I thought everyone said he’s nice and helpful! Creepy.”

“I can’t blame you for thinking of him that way, certainly.”

Still. Claude means well–he’s been nothing but kind to all of the people he cares about, even the ones that are downright antagonistic towards him like Lorenz, and when he’s been digging up info in questionable ways, there’s surprisingly little malice to it. Perhaps he’s just as easily misinterpretable as she is?

Maybe one day, she can actually sit him down and have a chat about all of this. He seems to have been dodging her every time she’s tried recently but she thinks it would do good for the both of them, and it’s not as if talking things out hasn’t worked for her so far.

* * *

Byleth isn’t very good at remembering where anyone’s supposed to be.

She’s tried hard to. It’s not that she’s a forgetful person (so long as you don’t count what has happened to her anywhere before five or so years ago, but she bets everyone has that problem), so much that it is that there’s simply too many people in this academy for her to keep track of. At one point, she even drew up her own tiny map of the academy, and attempted to list where she knew people would commonly be after classes–but it turns out people aren’t necessarily as habitual as she thought, and they like to go to lots of different places.

_Especially_ Claude, though. At least Leonie is generally at the training area, even if she likes to sometimes go to the docks to fish, and at least Lysithea is generally in the library, even if she can also show up in corners of the monastery nobody else goes near, attempting to hide her insatiable desire for sweets, but Claude has nowhere he ever hovers around. The only time she’s seen him outside of class recently was when he seemed to have caused a scene in the courtyard earlier that day, and she was unfortunately too engrossed in discussing strategy with Catherine to approach him. Annoying, especially when he decides to try and sneak out before she can provide homework for him.

So, in a last ditch effort after the school day’s end, she’s attempting to hover around as many areas as possible, before she gives up and slumps into her dorm room desk with sorbet in her hand. At this point, she thinks, Claude’s going to have to spend an entire day just on filling all of these papers out. Perhaps he just isn’t willing to take that responsibility?

Maybe she ought to have Parys put her foot down against him. She never has this problem with her; if Parys doesn’t plan on simply staying after class and asking for help finishing her work, it’s because she’s instead going out for tea with a student from another class, and by the time the school day ends, the Professor has already heard about it from quite a few students’ whispering to each other. Very simple and predictable, the way she would prefer it.

“Look, I get why you’d be mad that I know this.”

Ah, she finally hears Claude. It’s likely her fault that she didn’t check near the library earlier, though this might be one of the few times he’s been nearby when there was still daylight.

“H-how did you–” Oh, actually, that sputtering sounds like Hanneman, so Claude is likely in his office. “I didn’t even write that part down in any of my notes!”

“You absolutely didn’t, but you seemed to have made the mistake of letting a trained eye take a look at her.” Claude’s voice is surprisingly low in volume, much lower than Byleth is used to. “Manuela made a guess, and that was that.”

“And she _let you overhear it?_”

“…Define ‘let me’.”

Byleth hears an audible smack to a forehead and a groan, also from Hanneman. “This isn’t good at all.”

“Hey, I’m not going to tell anyone, I just stumbled into that information without meaning to.” Claude’s voice raises slightly. “I just want to relay the other thing Manuela said–that things are going to get worse if she just keeps pushing on and ignoring her problems. I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but I don’t want her to break herself for this stuff, alright?”

“I suppose.” Hanneman sighs loudly.

“Oh, and don’t let her know I told you this, please and thank you.”

Claude walks out of the room, and Byleth immediately approaches him near the stairs, visibly startling him.

“Oh! Uh, h-hi, Teach.” His grin looks strange to her, forcibly angled upward in a way that doesn’t seem very natural. “What are you doing up here?”

Byleth stares, casually shoving a bundle of papers into his direction. “You missed your homework for the past two weeks.”

“I did?” He looks confused for a moment, but quickly pipes out. “I mean, yeah, of course I did! Sorry for dodging you so much.”

“Why did you keep leaving class, precisely?”

“Well, _obviously_ I was procrastinating, and then it piled up so I kept wanting to put it off and all.”

Byleth looks on in worry. “I could have just helped you, you know.”

“I’m more of an independent learner, Teach.” Claude winks at her. “That’s why I just left the library, so I could learn this stuff on my own.”

She tilts her head. “But I just overheard you leaving Hanneman’s office.”

He immediately stops his movement in his tracks.

“You were talking to him about Manuela saying something?” Byleth crosses her arms. “And then someone else needed to stop pushing herself. Is this person one of my students?”

“Well…” He starts visibly sweating. “Okay, that was supposed to be a secret, but I did do that. I can explain, if you’d like?”

She blinks. “Okay.”

Claude scratches under his chin. “So, do youuuuuuuuu know how Parys came into nobility yet?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever considered it.” Byleth feels like Claude didn’t finish that sentence in his head before he said it out loud, but she doesn’t have a strong enough grasp on other people to know for certain. “Did she find an inheritance of some kind?”

“Yep, from none other than the long-lost House Chevalier.” Claude’s voice goes into a whisper, making Byleth think this is a secret of some kind. “And they found out she was in line for that inheritance after discovering her crest.”

“Her crest?” Byleth nods casually. “She hasn’t ever mentioned it, but given what I know about nobles so far, I suppose that makes sense.”

“Right. I was going to the infirmary at night, trying to get some _ingredients_–”

The Professor immediately glares at him.

“You can shame me after I explain, please.” Claude gets defensive. “Buuuuut, then I caught Manuela trying to take her temperature, and it turns out people with the Chevalier crest are notorious for radiating a whole lot of heat. Since she already knew Hanneman was so focused on her, she put two and two together.”

“Ah.” Byleth closes her eyes. “Does explain why I was so focused on her legs at first? Perhaps they radiated more heat than the rest of her.”

Claude sweats harder. “Something like that, sure.”

“But then, why would that result in her pushing herself too much?” Byleth loses herself in thought. “Does she overheat easily?”

“I mean, I don’t know that part, but I do know that she’s that warm because that crest of hers just beams out warmth–both literally _and_ emotionally.”

“Emotionally…?” She stares off for a moment, before her eyes widen with realization. “Her smile.”

“Exactly.” Claude snaps his fingers for emphasis. “That smile of hers is never a facade, and that’s kind of the problem. She’s always motivated and upbeat, even when she’s tiring herself out, and so she doesn’t really know how to calm down in those situations.”

Byleth nods. “I think I understand now.”

“Anyways, you can shame me now for sneaking in here, though in my defense, I couldn’t even make any good poisons with it–”

“Before you incriminate yourself more, I’d rather thank you for telling me this.” Byleth’s eyes look far less judging than they were before. “I’ll try not to mention how I know this, but I think I’ll be able to help her better with this information.”

“Oh! All’s well that ends well. Cool, so I’ll be going now?”

_“Ahem.”_ She’s glaring at him again.

“Right, right, the homework.” Claude takes the massive chunk of papers, and noticeably wheezes in shock when he finds it much heavier than he expected. “Uh. Well, off to the library I go!”

Claude slowly maneuvers the pile off to the other side of the hall, and while she thinks she hears a _phew_ from him, in that way she would say when she has an extremely close call in battle, she’s sure it doesn’t mean anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> parys was not supposed to have the world's largest polycule as an endgame, but then this fanfic was also not supposed to be anything more than a one-shot sooooooo whoops!


	5. Chapter 5

“Excuse me, Professor?”

Byleth looks up from her papers, strewn about on the teaching desk in class in vague piles of marked and unmarked, to find a certain blonde, motherly figure looking at her with a grin.

“Ah, good afternoon, Mercedes.” Byleth smiles softly, a new skill that she has learned in recent months. “What brings you here?”

“Well, I was thinking about this in the past week…” Mercedes carefully holds forward a sheet of paper. “And I was wondering if I could join your class!”

“Looking to join your friend?” Byleth takes them swiftly, getting a quill out to sign the form. “She gave me the form already.”

“We were supposed to do it together, but Annie got impatient. That’s okay, though, because we’ll still be put together, right?”

“Of course.” The Professor nods. “It’s the most efficient thing to do, after all.”

At the beginning of the school year, the Golden Deer class was rather empty, with most students opting to join the Blue Lions and Black Eagles instead. Not that she minded, necessarily, as it meant she was more able to focus on one-on-one teaching with those who needed it most, which in turn helped her learn how to actually talk to her students properly.

Somewhere after the first month or so, however, things started to change. Dorothea’s transferring wasn’t all that surprising, as she had heard of one of her old classmates harrassing her, and Byleth can understand why she wouldn’t feel comfortable staying there after. That she wanted to sit near Parys wasn’t surprising, either, because as she would later learn when sitting down with the diva for tea, the tallest student in her class turned out to have been the one defending her. Of course she’d allow it, the Professor thought, since it would ensure she feels safe.

“But, um, can I make a request for where we both sit?” The older student blushes slightly. “Could we… be seated next to Parys?”

“Oh.” Byleth frowns. “Is this her doing again?”

“‘Her doing’, Professor?” Her blush deepens as she poorly attempts to hide it. “I have no idea what you could be referring to!”

It is the Wyvern Moon, roughly halfway into the school year, and Mercedes von Martritz is the fifth girl this month to ask to sit next to Parys.

She thinks it was likely Ingrid that was the first to catch her off guard, several months before. Byleth saw the pegasus knight’s threats against her first-hand, constantly yelling at her over the course of weeks, to the point where she even challenged the girl to a duel with a lance right at her throat. Yet, one day she hears rumors of the two sitting down together at the courtyard, and only a few hours later, Ingrid had the form prepared and was nearly on her knees begging the confused teacher to keep the two close.

Suddenly, Byleth had an acute awareness of it, noting how female students would have tea with her, and always right on cue, those same students transfer without a second thought, and when even Flayn, a girl usually out of the loop of just about everything, joined her class and explained to the teacher, with a great deal of description over what she knows, how she did not need to sit near her, it was clear that everyone that was anyone knew of how she was like.

She doesn’t necessarily think poorly of Parys’ popularity–she’s aware that some discriminate against people of a same gender mingling together, but she doesn’t really get why such a thing would matter–so much as she thinks poorly about her sanity every time she has to rearrange all the seats; the way everyone has to be seated, an entire half of the class might as well be dedicated to women transferring from other classes, while the other side is the small dearth of the students she began with. At this rate, the classroom might overflow with students, and Byleth will just have to put Parys right in the center of the room, since everyone wants to be next to her.

The Professor already talks with her quite a bit, since the student seems to prefer being tutored regularly, but perhaps she should bring this up to her. What is it about her that makes so many women gravitate towards her? Does her crest have some other power nobody knows about yet? What makes her so easy to focus on?

Byleth puts herself deep in thought over this. “Is this also because of her legs?”

“Oh, Professor!” Mercedes gasps, face red as a tomato. “Isn’t it a bit strange for _that_ to be the thing you found so ravishing about her?”

Byleth tilts her head, mouth curled down and eyebrows raised. “Ravish…ing?”

This is all very confusing.

* * *

Claude, as is his wont, has some more work to do.

Thankfully, it’s all a bit more novel than his old work. He was getting kind of tired of his usual brand of sneaking around, since it always seemed to have him tripping into things he really doesn’t want to be a part of; while that whole thing with Parys and the infirmary was definitely the time he was most terrified, what made him decide to put it all off for a bit was actually running into Lorenz–_more than once_, it should be emphasized–understanding the boundaries of a woman in front of him about as well as he understands what a good haircut looks like. Especially since that guy’s already on his ass enough as is, he’d like to keep him at a couple dozens of arms’ distance, thank you very much.

So! No more sneaking around and finding noble creeps in person for now, he’s decided. Instead, just to mix things up, Claude thinks there’d be more fun in sneaking around and finding noble creeps through writing.

Here’s the deal: a few weeks ago, Teach and the gang had to deal with an issue where some strange crested beasts were attacking a traders’ route, but only from one direction. That’s strange, one would think, because they’re supposed to be indiscriminate, feral creatures, except these ones were being actively controlled by some bad actors supposedly under command to none other than the leader of House Gloucester. (_No wonder Lorenz is so creepy if he learned from that place_, Claude keeps thinking to himself.)

Given how dangerous it could be for any one person in the Alliance to have access to man-eating beasts, his old man was reasonably shocked by the news–which is how he managed to procure a list of every single trading family in the entire Alliance, ordered by which noble house they take orders from. After all, even if House Gloucester themselves can deflect blame by saying none of their men were involved, they never said they _didn’t_ just so happen to let some families under their radar to slip by.

Thus, Claude enters his dorm room at the dead of night, dumping out dozens of envelopes from a sack onto his bed. Stealing all of this was actually really easy, and he had so much time to sort out which came from Gloucester territory that it’s almost worrying, but he guesses most of these are considered too low-level to the Church for them to care–and, yeah, skimming through the first five or so of these things, they aren’t necessarily wrong. It’s mostly just overprotective mothers worried that their kids are going to die horrible deaths from being away for longer than three minutes, and/or asshole fathers reminding their kid that they’ll never get to live again if they don’t train to become some house’s twelth best armoured knight or whatever. Those anxieties are all alien to him, probably because he had a mother who didn’t raise him like a coward.

There is one recurring family sending letters, though, and they’re an interesting bunch, because while their letters are all labeled as being sent to the monastery, they don’t even mention who it’s being sent to. There’s a _lot_ of these, too, all unopened in an unmarked pile, making him think some of these letters were sent a while ago and nobody really put them anywhere since there was nobody to give them to. Shouldn’t they have been returned to the family by now? That’s an interesting sign.

Claude shoves all the books cluttering his desk to the floor and replaces them with the letters, dipping the end of his quill into his ink bottle as he opens up what looks to be the earliest and dustiest of them.

_To The Followers Of The Goddess,_

_We have written to you to request your assistance in praying for the safety of our youngest child, █████ █████████._

_We have not seen ███ for two months, as of this writing. We do not know how ██ had disappeared, nor why ██ would do such a thing. Until proven otherwise, we believe this to have been the result of a sinner, preying on our dear ███, and we will be looking into it._

_We would seek the church directly for such a request, but we are but a poor trading family, and we cannot afford such things. If possible, a simple reply of support would do, as we continue our search, and we believe that the Goddess would see it as such._

_May the Goddess bless you,_

_███████████████████████_

Unless he has to give it back to someone at some point, Claude likes to redact out the explicit identities of anyone mentioned in the things he digs through. It’s really costly for his ink supply, but he’ll remember the names well enough, it helps anonymize any potential innocents if someone finds all of his info, _and_ he gets to pretend he’s doing a good job on writing for school whenever he has to buy more ink! It’s a great idea all around, really.

Still, he can see something suspicious here. People in Fodlan have always had a bit of a religious streak to them, but from what he’s been skimming through of them, this family’s way of talking about it has an interesting vibe to it, less cocksured and more excusing… almost like they might be doing something they know deep inside is terrible, but they need someone to tell them it isn’t. Maybe they got paranoid about their child being kidnapped by a rival trader, and they used the beasts as a bargaining chip?

If nothing else, Claude is absolutely onto something here.

_To The Followers Of The Goddess,_

_We have yet to receive a response._

_We have recently discovered witness testimony of our ███, █████ █████████. It seems that ██ had been seen with a man from Enbarr who had been in the area for reasons unknown, before ██ had disappeared from the town. We believe that this man is the cause of ███ kidnapping, and we will attempt to look more into this man and his whereabouts._

_As we have not had the envelope returned to us, we know that you have read the contents of our last letter. We presume the church would have a similar want to keep our children safe from sinners as we do, so we will anticipate a proper reply soon._

_May the Goddess bless you,_

_███████████████████████_

Oh wow, they’re even getting snippy at the church! Totally good sign of your stability over a situation, when you see the people who could behead you at a moment’s notice and go _oh yeah, I can talk like this no problem_.

Enbarr, though… Adrestia in general has been an area Claude keeps hearing pop up every now and then when he digs into all of this, and while he doubts the princess at the academy has enough pull yet to try anything on that kind of scale (as he would know, being annoyingly not powerful enough to budge the Alliance much), he isn’t going to rule out someone involved in that government meddling in some affairs, especially given how close Gloucester territory is from them.

_To The Followers Of The Goddess,_

_We know the identity of the man who kidnapped our ███, █████ █████████, and we have concern over the implications of it._

_While giving passersby eyewitness descriptions of the man from what we currently know, we had found a lead from someone who had entered their child into your Officer’s Academy. Apparently, he is working there as some sort of teacher, and we believe this to be a mistake. We request an investigation to this man immediately, as who knows what other children he could be preying on?_

_We must not be getting your mail in error, for those who believe in the Goddess would not tolerate such disgusting acts._

_May the Goddess bless you,_

_███████████████████████_

Woah woah woah, hang on a minute, though–a teacher? _Here?_ Are they talking about the training instructor? He did find out about that guy’s identity as the Death Knight not too long ago, and he did find that out because he kidnapped Seteth’s little sister so he guesses that tracks, but that was just to get her blood! What else would he need with some random family’s kid?

He keeps humming and hawing over it, trying to piece things together, but none of it adds up. It’s not like they’d need someone to remember how to take blood or anything, because that’s not exactly a never before seen technology. The guy he saw who called himself the Flame Emperor especially doesn’t seem like he’d care about something as small and minute as some poor kid from Gloucester, and he’s apparently the one ordering the guy around. What’s going on here?

He thinks, and can only think harder as he opens up another envelope–and that’s when he starts seeing the threats.

_We know ██ is in the academy._

_We have the Goddess on our side. We have been given divine proof of it, time and time again, and we wouldn’t think such so-called followers would have the nerve to act as if they are on the side of good, as if you have any right to do such._

_We will spend every possible resource we can to right this wrong.  
Do not think we are but insects._

Something’s not right here. They’ve stopped talking like the kid actually got stolen, and more like they can’t admit the kid wanted to leave.

What else could it be? Did that Jeritza guy break out someone else when he came here? Maybe it was a different teacher? Maybe it was…

_██ had already received divine punishment for ███ sins._

_We had prayed, every night ██ had been gone from us all those years ago, and they were answered by ensuring that ██ never could stray from the Goddess again–yet, the devil Nemesis seemed fit to give ███ a chance once more. We will not allow ███ to sin again, and we refuse the possibility that you won’t stop ███ from doing so._

_Sinners._

Maybe it was Hanneman.

Oh no.

_The Goddess saw fit to break ███ leg, to keep ███ unable to leave us, as it ought to have been. Do you think it was our fault, Archbishop? We had done nothing, we had only taken what she had given to us and, and you disgusting, perverted heathens have the audacity to treat us like_ **_we’re_** _the sinners?_

_You do not have the Goddess with you, we do. We are the right, the correct and unflinching and we will not let your oversensitive deviled kind ruin what is ours._

_██ is ours. Sinners. Sinners._

His attempts at scribbling out the identities gets shakier, realizing just exactly what he dug himself into with each envelope being ripped hastily open, and each increasingly incomprehensible sentence being read.

_Is this some sort of twisted joke? Does the Archbishop think we would not take back our divine right, the ███ which we rightfully control? Do you think you are so blasphemous as to steal our gift?_

_We will spend every piece of gold taking ███ back, and we will ensure ███ original punishment is carried out as the Goddess intended. We are not cowardice heathens like you, Lady Rhea, we are not afraid to break ███ bones again and again and again and again until ██ but unable to do anything but rely and rely and rely_

_Sinners. Sinners. Sinners. Sinners. Sinners. Sinners._

The endless panic over trying to take back a fleeing child, the mentions of a Professor from Enbarr, the legs, the fucking legs–

_It’s about her._

_Just like before, choke ███ out in the dead of night and kill every sinner who thinks we do not own ███ and send their bodies into ashes and hit the knee over and over and over and over and_

_sinners sinners sinners sinners sinners sinners SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS_ **_SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS SINNERS_**

The old, dried ink trails off, leaving only a clean tear on the bottom half from where the quill pierced the material.

There’s one last unopened envelope from the family, tucked off at the back of his desk under endless scribbles over parchment, but he doesn’t have any ink left to finish it. He goes to bed, blowing out the candle and lying down, and for a single moment, his subconscious betrays him with his eye glancing at the half-full bottle, but he doesn’t have any ink, and he’ll dump it all out until that’s true.

He doesn’t know why he didn’t expect this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	6. Chapter 6

“Okay, I can get Bernadetta and all, right.”

Claude takes swigs from the cup of chamomille in front of him between glancing around the dorm bedroom he’s in.

“It was quite nice chatting with her.” Parys takes her sip far more calmly and nods. “A bit of a strange one once you get past her anxiety, though, yet kind all the same.”

“But!” Claude slams his fist down semi-forcefully, trying not to spill anything by accident. “_Ingrid?_ Seriously? How did you manage that?”

Parys tilts her head. “I talked to her?”

_“She was so mad that she wanted to kill you!”_

“More specifically, she was upset I was doing something she had suppressed.” Parys waves off the concern. “She was grown to believe that noblewomen were meant to marry off to noblemen and vice versa, after all.”

“And then, Miss Noble Extravagant comes in breaking that rule, and she got scared?”

“Precisely. All I did was give her permission to be who she wanted, and the rest came about on its own.”

“People here care so much about their oppressive traditions that they’ll even hurt themselves for it…” Claude slouches, head in his hands. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand.”

“It’s irrational, certainly, but it’s not insurmountable for people like us.” Parys smiles softly. “If I’m to have the privilege of a noblewoman, I better make use of it.”

He sighs. “That’s why I’m here, yeah.”

It is the end of the Red Wolf Moon, only a week before the Golden Deer class must investigate a sickness in a small village, and after what feels like a thousand years of Claude finding excuses, Parys has managed to sit him down to have a genuine chat. She’s confused as to why he’d dodge her for so long, because it’s not like it’s hard for the two to talk; it’s actually incredibly refreshing, being able to discuss these things with someone who understands how fundamentally broken the entire noble hierarchy is.

“Okay, wait, I need to ask something.” Claude pushes himself back up from the table. “You didn’t bring me here to just talk, did you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I guess you’ve done weirder things before, but this?” Claude gestures around Parys’ room, a tea table hastily thrown together in the center of it. “You don’t do this unless you want to discuss something in secret, right?”

“Did I?” She looks into the distance, before her eyes open in realization. “Oh hell, I did.”

“You _forgot?_”

Erm, he might actually be a tad too easy to talk to. Eyes on the prize, Parys.

Claude’s always known a bit too much for her comfort. This isn’t news, he’s known too much since before school even started, but something recently had to have pushed it over the line for him. Even when he’s felt threatened by her (and, to be fair, she did threaten him on the first day, so that’s on her), he would still chat during class, mostly because the Professor was constantly adamant about sticking the two together in battles, but in recent weeks, that suddenly changed. The one time she even managed to get eye contact with him before now, he seemed… guilty? Ashamed? She’s not sure, but it’s certainly not a positive feeling, and given how he’s like, she’s wondering if his well-meaning truth digging resulted in him learning too much for even his own sake.

It’s not like his recent strangeness is noticeable just to her, as even the Professor, who usually has the emotional awareness of a slabbed brick, talked to her about Claude doing worse in all of his training. Clearly, there’s a problem here that ought to be solved, and while she knows this isn’t the same kind of helping she does with women–no strange fluttering feeling in her chest, for one–she still can’t stand the idea that someone is suffering because of her. Even if the information hurts, she wants to do something about it.

“Well, goal number one was to just be able to actually sit down and talk with you for a change.” Parys puts her elbows on the table, hands loosely clasped together. “But I did have one subject matter you could discuss, yes.”

“I get a choice?”

She tilts her head. “Of course you do.”

“Huh, I would’ve personally taken the things I see in here to be your attempt at threatening.”

“What do you mean by _the things you see in_–”

Parys turns around, and realizes that under her bed, in direct eyesight from Claude’s view, is an iron lance.

Hm.

“I always forget to put this back after I sleep, don’t I.” She casually picks it up, and reaches it out to Claude’s direction. “Put this on your side, please.”

Claude stares at her in either absolute confusion or deadly fear, but she’s not sure which.

“Consider it an act of trust.” She starts sweating mildly. “Or, erm, something you can use in self-defense if I’m sincerely threatening, I don’t know.”

“Are you not going to explain why you have this?”

“Are you certain you need me to answer that?”

Claude freezes up, and for what feels like a century, there’s dead silence.

…

Parys sweats harder. “Please take the lance.”

“R-right.” Claude finally grips onto it, sliding it under his chair.

“Alright, let’s try that again.” Parys pinches her nose, trying to will away the stress headache coming on. “Simple enough premise: you already know quite a lot about what I’d like to discuss, yes?”

Claude sweats in turn. “Yeah?”

“And, I feel confident in saying that you’ve learned more in the past month.” Parys leans forward. “Am I correct?”

He scratches the back of his head, in that manner he does whenever someone correctly calls him out on something. “You really don’t let me hide much, huh.”

“So, a very simple request, you do not have to follow it.” She pours more tea for him, realizing he’s already drank the entire cup. “Please explain as much as you can for me.”

“T-that’s a whole lot you’re asking me to cover here, Parys.” He’s breathing quickly, oh dear. “Like, are you talking about what I know about the church, or being a prince or what your whole deal is or what?”

“Claude, I was just trying to ask–”

Parys’ eyes widen in confusion.

“You’re a prince.”

“…Of Almyra, yeah.”

“How on earth were you even able to hide that from–wait, no, don’t distract me.” Parys almost feels like disassociating to the moon with this information, but steadfast she remains. “What do you know about _me_, specifically?”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” Claude attempts to relax himself. “Okay, uh, I know that half the school has the hots for you. I know that the gardeners keep getting harrassed for roses every week because of girls wanting to give them to you.”

“Well, I can’t disagree with that one.” She glances behind Claude to a small table, containing a bundle of roses far too many in quantity for the small vase they’re shoved into. “Perhaps I should try to ask for more variety in flowers.”

“I know that you have the kind of herbs people use for their mounts when they’re nearly dead.” He points at the window in emphasis. “Though, uh, I’d only really need to smell outside your dorm room to figure that one out.”

Parys’ eyelid twitches. “She told me they would be scentless when it dissipated.”

“Yeah, well, ‘she’ might not have a working nose, who’s to say.”

She grumbles under her breath, annoyed that someone as important as the archbishop wouldn’t know such information.

“I, uh, also know why you need them.” Claude gestures vaguely at her lower half. “I mean I don’t know the specifics about the leg, or who did it to you or anything, but–”

“It was my own fault.”

“Wait, what?” Claude looks at her. “You sure you’re not saying that the way Bernadetta says things are her fault?”

“Nobody else broke my legs.” Parys closes her eyes. “I simply made an… _unfortunate_ call in the heat of the moment once, and the law of physics punished me for it.”

“Huh.” Claude looks on in worry. “I was kind of expecting you to get angry at me for knowing that.”

“It was always inevitable that people would learn, since I can only pretend it’s undamaged for so long.” She sighs. “I simply didn’t want it to be the first thing people knew of me. Can’t be seen as a powerful defender if everyone starts pitying me, after all.”

“I guess that’s true.” Claude looks off into the distance, still drinking from the chamomille. “Though, uh, Teach still doesn’t know yet, even though she’s fixated on them. Keeps thinking you’re attracting everyone with your magic thighs, or something.”

“Well, I suppose it’s not surprising that her awareness only comes about in battle.” Parys giggles. “Honestly, I hope nobody tells her, just to see how she builds on that.”

“Maybe she’ll start to think it’s some tactical advantage?”

_“It’s important to remember, students.”_ She mockingly matches the Professor’s voice. _“A warped knee is actually necessary to titilate all the opponents with lust!”_

_“Alright now, kids, line up single file to the guy with the hammer!”_ Claude finds his own mocking tone to add onto. _"In two to three years, we’ll have an army of soldiers harnessing the power of bad legs!_

The two cackle alongside each other, and for the first time, Parys actually feels a comfort in being able to talk with him. She’s never actually had meaningful contact with him, always feeling like they each had something to hide locking them away from each other, and while this should make her panic, but it’s nice, to simply talk with someone who knows too much for her to feel afraid anymore. It’s nice to have a conversation with someone where she doesn’t need to know what she feels about them, nice to have someone she can just talk to and end it at that.

There’s so many women in her life straddling the line between friend and crush, too many people who she doesn’t know whether they want to talk to her as an acquaintence or if they want so much more than that. It sounds like such a snobby thing to complain about, like _oh no, there’s too many people who love me, woe is me_, but sometimes a woman just doesn’t want expectations of what could be more, and just wants to enjoy the comfort of someone who can just be nice to be around.

It’s nice. Plain, regular old social discussion feels nice. She likes this.

“Actually, I, uh, know one more pretty big thing.” He digs a bundle of papers out of one of his pockets. “I was looking through letters being sent to… I think it’s for the archbishop, but I don’t know for sure.”

“And it pertains to me?”

“It does. You’ll figure it out when you read through them.”

She takes one, and slowly begins reading through it. She recognizes the handwriting immediately, a style of penmanship done only by people who never learned how to do it the right way, but still needs to try too hard to come off as fanciful, and the first letter mentioning a lost child confirms it. Their obsession with treating her as an object to be held isn’t surprising, and that they still call her a child after she turned 18 is even less surprising.

Her expression is subtle, not smiling but not shaking, and she scans through the others, one by one, taking minutes at a time to go over each one, before she suddenly stops at the fourth.

“Are these all similar in this content?”

“They get real threatening and implying hiring goons on you later, but yeah.”

She sighs, staring at the not-too-old ink blotting out the names.

“You crossed out all of the pronouns.”

“I did.”

She stares harder, looking genuinely confused. “Why?”

“I dunno?” Claude stares at the ceiling instead. “I guess it just made sense, to hide the identity of the innocent and keep them safe and all.”

There’s no words said. Claude tries to wait for her to respond, before he notices wetness forming in her eyes.

“I mean, uh, did I word that right?” He scratches the back of his head again. “Like that was my original intent with it, and I guess I ended up being right for a different reason, but…”

Parys keeps staring, deep in thought, as Claude lets her take her time to process. He thinks she might be breaking down, and just as he’s about to ask if she needs help–

“Thank you.”

She smiles, wider than he’s ever seen.

“E-excuse me?”

“This, this was the thing I was so scared of.” She sets down the paper, grin still high. “That if someone discovered who I truly was before, I’d be rejected, and especially if everyone already thinks of me as some horrible predatorial monster they’ll try and kill me, but, but you _know_.”

“I do.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“My mother raised me to appreciate folks with the courage to change themselves.” Claude shrugs. “It’s a sign of bravery, right?”

“That’s…”

Parys suddenly hugs him tight, startling the poor guy for a second before he realizes it’s out of happiness, and when she pulls away, he sees tears running down her cheeks and a sniffling nose, but not a hint of fear.

“You’re a good man, Claude.” Her face is beaming in kindness. “I thank you dearly.”

* * *

At some point, after the two calmed down from that, they just kept talking. Claude tried to find a purpose to it at first, still stuck in the mentality that he can’t talk unless there’s something useful to it. How is she able to befriend people so easily? Can he make use of that at any point? Could he ask her more about the letters?

But if there’s anything he actually learned, it’s that Parys’ ability to make people calm down for a bit is even more unparalleled than he thought, because instead of trying to force productivity where there was none, she eventually just got him to… _talk_. About _things_. Sometimes, about how the cold wind can be calming and how some birds are willing to stick around and survive the cold every year, or about this one weird lunch lady who only speaks in grumbles but makes a mean sorbet once a week that she swears by (of which it was that day of the week, so naturally they had to quickly go get some and sneak back into the dorms with them before the evening grew too dark), but there was no purpose to it because there didn’t need to be any purpose to it.

He’s so used to having everything be about something that he’s never really thought about having conversations that can just _be_, and it’s nice. Being able to just talk to someone without care or a particular motivation beyond “I felt like it” feels nice. Maybe he wouldn’t need to drink so much damn chamomille to calm down if he did this kind of stuff more.

“…I keep thinking about that thing you said with Ingrid.”

Parys looks up from her bowl of sorbet, spoon still in mouth. “Bit of a non-sequitir, that.”

“Hey, I haven’t exactly been running out of time to think about it.” Claude stares up at the ceiling from the bed, sitting next to her with his back to the wall. “But what you said kind of tracks with some things Lorenz has told me before.”

“Does it, now.” She takes the spoon out, keeping it held in the air. “He has to constantly refer to some noble etiquette guide, so I suppose it makes sense.”

“Right.” Claude licks the last of his own sorbet off his fingers. “And he’s definitely gotten really testy and defensive about it.”

She raises her eyebrows. “What caused it?”

“Well, he kept getting up close and personal with me,” _As he usually does with everyone he talks to_, Claude winces, “So I said something to the effect of ‘you just needed to ask if you wanted to touch me’ and he immediately recoiled.”

“Pffft.” Parys snorts. “Quite the jest to play on someone like him, certainly.”

“I mean, uh.”

“…That was a joke that you told him.” She glares at him. “Right?”

Claude remains silent for ages, visible sweatdrops forming on his face, and Parys nearly coughs her lungs out trying to keep her laughter in.

“Okay, look, I can explain!” Claude blurts out, red in the face. “He’s not that bad!”

She bites down on her own spoon to try and muffle her giggling. “You’re the man who judged me for flirting with the Professor!?”

“At least I have a crush on a student!”

“At least I have a crush on someone who _knows what the word ‘stop’ means!_”

“I–yeah, you have a point there, don’t get me wrong, but!” Claude starts stammering, waving his arms in the air as some desperate attempt at gesturing. “He’s only like that because of the garbage his old man taught him! The moment he stopped reading that damn handbook, he was being a good person who cares about people!”

“Sure, sure.” Her laughter has quieted, finally. “Goodness, that wasn’t something I planned on learning today.”

“Gaaaaah.” Claude sighs in his hands, his entire body shading red. “Why did I have to have this kind of taste in men…”

“You know what, I’m pretty filled.” Parys slides her melting, half-finished bowl of sorbet to him. “Need this?”

“Extremely.” He takes his own spoon and jams it right into the dessert.

There’s a comforting silence for a while, mostly as Claude eats himself out of his shame. If nothing else, at least the one person who found out isn’t going to judge him as some devilspawn for liking a boy, even if she’s definitely judging him for liking Lorenz in particular. Fodlan is weird, and how much they care about this stuff is especially so, so it’s nice to have someone else who understands.

“Actually, since we’re on the topic of remembering things.” Parys is still fiddling with her spoon. “Do you really not know why I fight so well?”

“No clue.” He glances back at her, tossing the now-empty bowl aside with his spoon. “I know you had left your family before, but I don’t know much else.”

“There was a leader of a mercenary company who picked me up when I had ran as a child.” She smiles softly. “_The Shining Sun._ He taught me every single thing I’ve done with a lance.”

“He sounds familiar.” Claude squints upon hearing it. “But, uh, does he not have a regular non-nickname?”

“Oh no, that was his legal one, he had documents for it and everything.” She looks on, like she’s thinking of fond memories “He’s the one who picked out the name I now have, even. He…”

Parys sighs.

“He was a kind man.”

Claude thinks back to the few things his grandfather told him, when he first entered the Alliance. The name rung a bell, but only ever in warnings given out by other mercenary groups, telling people to have a 24/7 guard duty after the poor guy’s whole crew–

Ah. Hang on.

“I think I can piece it together from there, actually.” Claude breathes heavy, realizing what this all means. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“I’m only in this school to find a way to honor his wishes, you know.” Her smile starts growing, beaming with ambition. “He tried to save up as much money as he could for only one thing–he wanted to house all the children he had saved over the years.”

Claude sees the papers on her desk as she’s talking, dozens upon dozens of legal forms from territories all over Fodlan strewn about, from the cold depths of Faerghus to the docks of Enbarr.

“I can use my status here to convince enough people with money to donate to my cause. Perhaps, with that money, I could buy the necessary land near here, since Garreg Mach is a neutral territory. And then… I could request help from the church to build a shelter, with a room for every child to feel safe in.”

“The Shining Sun’s home of outcasts.” Claude smirks. “I like it.”

“That’s quite a nice name.” She claps in enjoyment. “I suppose I have your support then, partner?”

“_Partner?_ I feel like this whole thing’s upgraded us long past combat acquaintences by now.”

“Hm.” Her tone is questioning simply, her head leaning on one finger, but smile refusing to fade. “I suppose it has.”

The air feels like it’s lightened from learning that, and for a second, Claude thinks that maybe what he wants to do isn’t such an unlikely probability. Maybe he doesn’t have to fight impossible odds if he has friends this selfless and kind, maybe he really can just open up Fodlan to build a more gentle world to those in need, without having to be scared of war.

Maybe this can all work out, and nobody has to die or anything and everyone here can be happy and free–

“Parys?”

So, naturally, that’s when he hears knocking.

“Professor?” She startles herself from the loud noise. “A bit late to be banging on the door like that, isn’t it?”

“Emergency.” Byleth sounds rushed behind the door, panting between words. “Bandits took over a nearby village, they’re threatening to kill everyone unless we bring them a student.”

“A–” Parys’ throat catches. “A student?”

“We don’t know who, but it doesn’t matter.” Her voice is getting louder, possibly from a panic. “The Knights of Seiros are off on a mission. Help me find the rest of the class, we have to fight back.”

And just like that, the air grows heavier once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. i'm never allowed to use "..." again in the rest of this fic, i used up all my ellipses passes here  
2\. i absolutely didn't begin writing this fic thinking i'd bring up her being trans at any point, since it seemed like something that'd just stay in the background forever, but sometimes you accidentally write some good shit about claude von riegan validating someone's gender and that's the way it is  
3\. :)))))


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you're all prepared for these next few chapters to be really happy!
> 
> ** _CONTENT WARNINGS_ **   
_these next chapters will mention, but not explicitly show,  
suicide, transphobia, family abuse and depictions of broken bones.  
(parys is going to be good by the end, honest)_
> 
>   
like i said, very happy. so very, extremely happy. no sad things here what no why would you think that

Attempting to take down a small, straw-stuffed training dummy, a young child swings a lance about with no efficiency whatsoever.

“Aye, kid.” A scruffy-looking man behind the child looks on with absolute shame in his eyes. “You, uh, know you ain’t supposed to use it like that, right?”

“But that’s how you did it, Sunny!” The child turns around, looking confused. “I wanna do it like that!”

The man wipes his face, having already known full well that this was his fault. In his defense, he didn’t mean to use a lance like that, because he didn’t mean to reach for someone else’s lance; it was in the heat of battle, and some bastard happened to strike his axe out of his hands, so he scrambled to find something with a handle and swung. As much as it made him look like an absolute geek to the enemy, some big buff asshole trying to use a steel lance like it’s a combat staff from an opera play made for a hell of a distraction, so the rest of his crew cleaned up well for what it was.

“The way I did it was like a worse kinda axe, you realize.” He tries his best not to groan out of his own embarrassment. “You don’t wanna use a worse kinda axe, do ya?”

The child attempts to pout, failing. “But I wanna be like you.”

“Kid, we’ve been through this before.” He sighs. “You really don’t, trust me.”

“But Sunnyyyyyyyy, you’re so cool!”

“Sure am, _but_, think about it.” He crouches down to meet the child face-to-face. “You plan on lifting weights every day to get these muscles?”

The child thinks. “Sounds like a lot of effort.”

“Do you wanna get a diet of meat on meat to bulk all of it up?”

“But the cake that chef guy bakes are so nice!”

“Nope, no sweets for me.” He chuckles internally at how the kid always calls reliable ol’ Janetty ‘chef guy’. “And, do you want this luxuriously scruffy beard on top of that?”

“You need that to use axes?”

“It’s the most important part, kid. Makes the whole intimidating factor add up.”

The child looks down for a moment, before making a face of confused disgust. “Ew, gross.”

The man bellows out laughing in response. “_Exactly!_ You can’t be like me all the time, you know.”

“But, um, Sunny.” The child looks back up in a worried smile. “Who do I be, then?”

“Well, you’ve asked me that before.” He looks down into their eyes. “Remember the dress thing?”

“Oh, like that one time I told you I wanted to wear a dress when I was little.” The child thinks, making faces that the poor guy still can’t help but respond with a snicker. “But then my mom said I wasn’t allowed to ’cus other folks like me won’t do that and everyone got all upset.”

“And what did I tell you?”

“That it’s no good to try and be like other folks if it don’t make sense, even if people keep telling me to.” The child looks deep in thought, eyes slowly widening. “And… that if I wanna do good, the only kind of folk I can be is myself.”

“So!” The man claps in emphasis. “What do you know you’re good at?”

“Well, I can do some acrobatics good.” The kid beams up, eyes beaming with ideas. “I did ballet a whole lot ’cus my mom thought it’d make me look more fancy! Can I use that, Sunny?”

“Why don’tcha try?”

The child looks off into the distance for but a moment, before suddenly turning around back to the dummy. They look to the ground, seemingly drawing a path between them and the target, left foot dug into the ground and preparing to be on their toes. The old man isn’t sure of the specifics of what they’re thinking, but he’s got an idea—

“Sword coming from the right, kid! Go for the throat!”

—and just like that, the child spins counter-clockwise away from the imaginary blade, almost instantly from the moment he said the word ‘right’. The sheer grace of it is almost incomprehensible to him, completely unlike even the usual fancy-pants noble lance fighters he’s seen over the years, and without even a second after the other sentence, the kid thrusts forward right out of the motion, using the momentum to push the lance through.

When he realizes what the kid managed, all he can say is _holy shit_.

“Sunny!” Only a few minutes after this child flailed about like they had never seen a weapon before, the dummy now has a puncture wound, right in the throat, as they pipe up in raw celebration. “Sunny, Sunny, I did it!”

“Kid, I knew you had it in ya to do good and all, but…” He’s genuinely dumbfounded by what he just witnessed, with the raw accuracy of a lance thrust he’s pretty sure the kid had never tried before. “That was somethin’ else.”

Nearby, next to the makeshift campfire where the rest of his folks are eating and drinking the night away, a big fella near the front caught the action long enough for him to holler with the force of a screaming crow in excitement, before everyone else piped in like they all just witnessed a miracle. And, hell, given how bright this kid looks just from doing one good shot, maybe it was, like the gleam of a shooting star that dropped right on this funny little mercenary group’s collective laps.

“You know what? Let’s get you a training partner.” The man points to his top swordsman in the cheering group. “If you’re sober enough, get a cheap stick and train with ’em for a bit. Let’s see how far we can make this work!”

“Yessir!” The swordsman runs off to the crew’s small armory.

“Kid, you’ve got a hell of an idea going on here.” The old man grins, the toothless, goofy open-mouth grin he’s known for. “Keep at it, yeah!”

“Okay! Thanks, Sunny!” The kid grins back a mile wide, and that’s enough for the man to know he did his job.

He walks off into the crowd, satisfied with his work, and finally getting to sit down with a nice slab of cooked meat and booze. That kid’s not the first one he’s picked up, given that bringing the homeless to a safe place and a tent to hide under has effectively become the group’s side gig, but they’ve definitely been the most interesting; when one of his brawlers found them while doing escorting for some nobles, they were starving to death, hadn’t drank water in two days, and seemed to have bruises every place the healers could find, and yet the kid still smiled through all of it.

It’s almost befitting that they came here. The Shining Sun, traveling with the most shining smile a child could have. Ain’t that just some storybook stuff.

“You know, boss, you’re gonna need to come up with a name for ’em fast if they hate the one they got.” The big guy prods at him with an elbow, sitting right next to him on the log. “If you ain’t careful, the kid might take yours while you aren’t looking!”

The rest cackle with the joke, but they might have a point. The Shining Sun might be a guy known to laugh and live, but he’s been broken down and sick before and he can’t recall smiling the way they have. Goddess forbid ’em, kid might take his place in the world.

“Hmmm.” The old man considers hard, taking swigs of ale between name choices. “Idea: Janetty, what was that one rich people bubbly you gave me last month that sparkled a whole lot?”

“Hold up, we’re gonna name the kid after booze?” The lanky man in question pipes up across the campfire. “I know we’re sloshed an’ all, but that seems a bit off.”

“It’s _extravagant_ booze, Janetty, c’mon!” He raises his mug up when yelling. “Kid wants to wear hip bone dresses with a lance strapped to the back, that screams fancy-pants bubbly!”

The crowd looks back at the child, currently in the midst of doing pirouettes with the spear held high in the air, before tossing it right into the dummy’s chest, which elicits another cheer from the dozens at the campfire.

“You know what, maybe they are fancy-pants bubbly.” Janetty tilts his head. “Uh, think it was something like _Pearease Eyelon_, or something or other.”

“Yeah, yeah, that one!” The old man points at him sloppily and excited. “Kid looks like a, uh, Parys, or whatever you just said! Perfect name!”

The big guy scratches the back of his head. “Does anyone know how that bubbly was spelled, though?”

“Like hell I’m buying that stuff again to check.” Janetty crosses his arms. “Damn thing costed a fortune, it did.”

“Ahhhh whatever, we’ll wing it, who cares.”

He takes another swig, and gets one last glance at the kid, who could almost count as their own fireplace with the amount of light they’re eminating. The old man’s never been one for caring too much about having much future planning, and especially with all the enemies he’s made over the years of going by his own rules, he’s expecting to be dead any day now. While he’s made peace with it, seeing this child’s energy is making him rethink some stuff, like maybe he shouldn’t just throw everyone else’s life away alongside his own. Maybe he should do more than just plop these kids down wherever they call home and call it a day. Maybe he oughta set up some proper plans for this, a real big house they can all live in, well past his demise.

He’s too far in to back out now, he knows that and all, but, shit, that kid deserves a better chance. If there really is a goddess out there, and she’s not a fan of tragedy, maybe they’ll get it.

* * *

_Limping out into the forest, the child keeps the lance close. They aren’t certain if what they had done was the best thing to do, but it’s not like there were many other options; to go anywhere else atop the cliff was to accept defeat from intruders, having ambushed the entire crew in the middle of the night._

_They’re alone now. They’re very confident Sunny’s not around, not anymore. He was one of the first ones to approach them, after they got the chef. Taking a gulp, they aren’t certain they’d want to see him go away like that. Not while they’re still there to hear it, there to see it._

_They’ve already seen so many dead bodies before. They don’t want to know what it looks like when Sunny’s not smiling._

“Parys?” A voice calls from above, the audible noises of a wyvern’s wings following. “Where’d you hop off to?”

_Their leg hurts. It didn’t hurt too much a minute ago, and they could still put their foot down hard enough to walk, but something about it is off. If it weren’t so dark, they would realize how a bone has put itself well outside where it should be, but everything is dark, and they aren’t sure they feel anything enough to feel the wind blowing directly into its wound._

_They hear footsteps. That’s not good, there’s not supposed to have been anyone else coming down with them._

“Alright, I know you of all people would love to try and make that jump off a cliff work the second time around, but—” Claude? What is Claude doing here? Why did he interrupt himself? “Oh no.”

_Oh no no no no no there’s not supposed to anyone here._

“Okay, just, hop up here, okay?” Parys feels a hand. “Marianne’s not far behind, you just need to stay alive.”

_They can’t outrun them. They did not know this, but they also couldn’t run, or actually stay standing for another ten seconds, because the moment they even begun to try they had crashed to the ground a second time, nose bleeding and head spinning._

“Look, Teach already dealt with it, okay? Bandits are dead and everything, problem’s been solved and we can all go home. Let’s just keep you steady, alright?”

_Where could they even go? Will anyone even be left alive to know?_

“Uh, hey, you’re kind of scaring me with that stare. You still conscious in there?”

“Not…”

_They can’t go back again. They want to see Sunny, they want to laugh and feel free and not taste acid in their mouth from panic whenever their mother catches wind that they had another dress in the house._

** _“Not again.”_ **

_They would rather die here._

“What are you doing with that lance.”

_With the footsteps drawing near,_

“H-hang on, don’t hold it up like that.”

_and the child flat on their back,_

“Parys, put it down.”

_there’s only one thing left to do._

“I swear, don’t make me take that from you—”

_Readying their weapon one last time,_

“Parys!”

_the child prepares their final stand._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, foolish, one week ago:
> 
> oh hey, i finally have motivation to continue this! well, time to enjoy the fun, innocent times of this cool lesbian oc i
> 
> wait
> 
> [looks at plot summaries]
> 
> uh
> 
> [looks at next few chapters i have lined up]
> 
> _uhhhhhhh_


	8. Chapter 8

Byleth doesn’t quite know how to be mad yet.

In only a week, she would have plenty of anger material to think on, the sight of her quaint little village rotted by the greed of disgusting cretins, wearing the faces of people’s dearest friends, filling her ashen heart with visions of killing everyone who caused it, but in this moment, at the end of the Red Wolf Moon, rage is an unknown she has never felt, something that seemed pointless every time her father’s mercenary friends would emote it. She saw no reason to be angry.

Until now, anyways.

“Hmph.” The leader of the bandits looks on, a fully-masked helmet giving an uncaring glance atop his steed. “I see no sight of the boy here.”

“I won’t be bringing him to you.”

There was a little letter, with handwriting sloppy enough to where even she could laugh at it, stuck to her dorm room door with a knife. In the letter, there was a name of a boy she was supposed to give them, else they kill off an entire village with their small army. A very frightening army, one could say, as through some twisted means they had even been able to bring winged demons alongside them, horrific giant beasts that no mere bandit group should ever manage to have.

Byleth never even bothered to look at the name of the student they wanted. It didn’t matter, because the answer was always no.

They wanted to take her students.

“You think the Ashen Demon title scares me, child?” The bandit’s annoyance grows. “As if a little fairy tale’s name stopped me before. I’ve killed men far larger in stature and notoriety than you.”

They wanted to take _her_ students.

“I’ll kill you.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, the Sword of the Creator is unsheathed, and she recklessly moves forward. She’ll do this a million times, if necessary, regardless of how much a certain creature in her head keeps saying to do anything else.

_Just wait for the little girl in white to come here, you dolt! Can you at least try and bring a healer first!?_

Absolutely not.

Pushing forward with a parry, she strikes at his horse. When she cannot have the whip wrap around its front leg, she goes back, and tries again; when she pulls at the wrong angle, and the horse stays upright, she goes back, and tries again; when she’s not precise enough to swing his sword out of reach of him, she goes back, and tries again. Usually, she never cares enough for this, her work always hitting the reins of ‘good enough’ to where it doesn’t matter, but for this man she wants nothing less than a flawless destruction.

He doesn’t get to breathe. Not anymore, not after all the stories she heard from the few knights still around the monastery, all speaking of the mercenary companies this man has helped maim and destroy for a high price. They speak of his gang as if he has no reason to be doing any of this, not with how little he spends and how much he’d made; the only possible explanation, the one that keeps ringing through her head again and again with each failure and retry, is that he simply takes pleasure in the killing.

The sword catches around his throat. The bandit attempts one last go at speaking, one last thing he wants to say before his end is finally met, so naturally Byleth goes back one more time, and pulls as hard as she can one second earlier than before, because he does not deserve to speak. What felt like ten minutes of effort, all resulted in about ten seconds of battle, as his helmet rolls down near the rest of the crowd, his head still within it. One bandit, in the midst of harassing Bernadetta, takes a glance at it and immediately falls over in shock.

“Your leader is dead.” She tries not to show the rage in her voice, yelling out to the few surviving bandits, but it’s not something she’s done before, loud cracks easily climbing through her attempt. “Surrender your weapons now, or meet his fate.”

One by one, they all drop their weapons and flee. Knowing the church, none of them are to survive the next few days, but it’s not like she cares. If it wasn’t so inefficient, she may very well have killed them all on her own, but she thinks the last things her students need to see is more bloodshed.

“P-professor!” Bernadetta, realizing the battle’s over, sprints over. “You’re safe! Oh thank goodness, I saw you running up ahead of everyone and I was so scared because I didn’t know if I had the aim to pierce all these guys’ throats and—”

_Especially not to enable her._ Sothis grimaces at how much she’s muttering. _You don’t want to be the reason this poor girl turns violent, do you?_

As much as she’s loathe to admit it, Sothis absolutely has a point.

“Do you know where the other students are?”

“Oh? Uh, I kinda outpaced them too.” The little girl looks meek again, confusingly so for how much punishment she took. “Though I think I heard Marianne and Claude chasing around? Something about having to go down, um.”

Bernadetta points at the edge of the cliff.

_Oh, for the love of…_ The floating woman smacks her forehead. _THAT’S why you keep your students close! Where did your common sense even go recently!?_

“How far deep is it?”

“W-well, probably not too far if she can climb down it?”

“So there should only be minor injuries.” Byleth tries to speak neutral, like the realization hadn’t put a confusing negative feeling in her chest that she doesn’t understand. “Alright then, we need to count which other students are sound so we can—”

“HELP!”

The feeling in Byleth’s chest instantly drops to her stomach, as she turns around to see Marianne crying out, alongside a wyvern, both trying desperately to carry two people.

It’s Claude and Parys, unconscious, limp. There’s a lance between them?

Wait. The lance isn’t _between_ them, it’s…

Oh no.

* * *

“So, do you plan on explaining yourself yet?”

Parys stares into the ground, expression silent.

“She’s not going to be persuaded, clearly.” The blonde woman standing in front of her cracks her knuckles, speaking with a uncomfortable casualness. “We need to up the ante.”

“Don’t you dare.” Shamir pushes the woman back. “If I catch you hitting a student on my watch, the next person getting impaled around here is you.”

Catherine eases up. “I was joking.”

_“I wasn’t.”_

There’s a clear tenseness between the two. If Parys had any willpower left, she’d almost find it amusing.

The cold prison floor she kneels on is lifeless and uncaring, and what little consciousness she has left is dedicated just to staying still, because her arms being tied behind her back isn’t allowing for any balance.

She’s still not sure what happened. Nobody seems to be willing to explain, beyond vague descriptions of a struggle, followed by Claude getting…

“Look, how are the higher-ups even sure she’s not another traitor?” Catherine raises her voice. “You don’t just stab someone out of sight from everyone else like that!”

Hurt? _Killed?_ Did she kill him? She isn’t quite sure, but whenever she thinks about it for too long, her body collapses into nothing, so it’s not something she’s considered well. She’s also apparently been in a prison cell ever since, though for how long she isn’t certain, because all she can remember has been the nightmares.

It’s the only reason she wants her eyes to stay open. She’ll prefer any abuse she takes here. At least in this moment, underground and away from all other life, she won’t see them anymore.

“Would you like to raise your suspicions about her to the Professor’s face?” Shamir crosses her arms. “If I didn’t already know full well how dense you are, I’d almost take your willingness for violence as being suspicious.”

“Why, you—”

Parys fails to keep herself steady, and crashes to the ground, her knee buckling her on her side.

“Oh, c’mon, again?” The blonde woman beside her taps the girl with her feet. “Up.”

She lays silent on the ground.

Catherine prepares to kick the girl in the gut. “I said _up_, you little—”

“Thunderbrand.”

The deep grumble behind the woman stops her in her tracks.

“Jeralt.” Shamir sighs. “Thank you for getting here before she did something else stupid.”

The old man looks at Catherine, who’s slowly putting her foot back down. “No wonder my kid’s been wanting to beat the hell out of you recently.”

“She’s been _what?_”

“I’ll deal with the problem knight.” Shamir gestures to her partner, who is now seething with rage. “Just get her out of here.”

With minimal effort, Jeralt picks the limp girl off the ground, and hauls her over his shoulder. It confuses her, not because she doesn’t realize she’s light, but because she could have sworn there were shackles keeping her tied to the ground, the only way she could explain how heavy she felt.

She doesn’t know where she’s going. It’s getting bright? But then, anything other than the place she was slotted in would seem bright to her, wouldn’t it. She would close her eyes to block it out, but when she tries for but a moment, her mind quickly conjures up images that remind her why she would rather her pupils sear. She sees stairs, followed by hearing bickering amongst a crowd.

“Parys!?”

And the sound of the professor, apparently, chasing near.

The large man sighs. “Kid, it’s bad manners to interrupt a prisoner escort.”

“Dad, what were they doing to her?” Her eyes have deep, dark circles underneath from lack of sleep, like this isn’t even the only thing she’s had to worry about recently. “Rhea wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Nobody knows, she was deep enough in the dungeons until today for it to be hidden away from everyone.” He shrugs, Parys’ lifeless body moving up with his shoulder. “That’s why she wants to see her.”

“Just make sure she’s safe after all this, please.” The professor frowns, one far too heavy for her. Byleth can do that? Parys has never seen the corners of her mouth move much at all, before. How long has she been down there, to where changes like this can happen? “I don’t… want…”

“I know, kid.” The old man scritches at her hair with his free hand. “Probably just some bureaucratic nonsense that needs sorting out. She’ll be fine, I’ll make sure of it.”

She looks on worried, but, likely out of trust of her father, walks off.

“You’re lucky she cares so much, you know.” The father in question smirks. “Probably would’ve gotten your head lopped off by now if she wasn’t worried sick enough to do some digging.”

Parys remains silent.

“Yeah, yeah, this isn’t a good time for small talk.” He continues hauling her off, the lights around them fading softly as he moves indoors. “Just make sure to thank her once this all blows over.”

_Once this all blows over._ Parys doesn’t quite understand why she finds that so discomforting, why she was able to feel her stomach again after so long, only to find it churning over in hatred of the idea. Perhaps she doesn’t anticipate that time coming for her. Perhaps she just doesn’t want to live long enough to find it.

“Is the other brat already in there?”

“Yes, sir.” A guard for what she thinks is the Archbishop’s chamber responds with a step. “He came on his own.”

“Good, less kids to wrangle up.” Jeralt tries to drop her to her feet, though he’s clearly spending energy making sure she still stands. “Let’s go. Don’t make too much of an embarrassment out of yourself, now.”

The doors swing open. Certainly enough, she sees Lady Rhea, alongside what she vaguely recalls as being her brother standing directly beside. Parys gets all of two steps forward before her knee shakes once more, and with a loud crash she lands to the ground, her eyesight quickly losing sight of the two and instead seeing—

“Claude.”

“Ehehe…” He sounds meek, which is usually not a good sign. “Thaaaat’d be me.”

“You’re alive.”

There’s silence between them. Parys’ vision is too blurred for her to know if it’s out of fear, or deep thought.

“They really didn’t tell you much down there, huh.” There’s a weak laugh coming from him. It might be because of the context, but she thinks his upper body has bandages wrapped all around it, so that might be the most he can laugh. “What kind chaperones.”

“Do you think we ought to treat _prisoners_ with kindness?” That angry voice is new? Maybe that was the brother?

“And what was her crime, exactly? I don’t remember giving many details on that, especially not to you.”

“I see the hole that was in your shoulder, and I see enough to know what happened, child.”

“Oh, and that explains her having the exact same hole, does it?” Seems that made him have enough power in his lungs to get angry, at least. “What _master sleuthing_ from the Archbishop’s right hand man!”

“D—” His voice hitches, as if he had never even considered to look at her. “Do you dare doubt the church!?”

“You know what I think’s happening?” Claude speaks through gritted teeth, his voice boiling over. “I think your knights just made a guess as to which noble’s more disposable, didn’t they? Tell me, without the fear of my old man’s political power, you think they’d have taken me instead?”

“You speak far too much for someone in front of authority, you little—”

** _“Seteth, stop.”_ **

The Archbishop’s voice bellows in echos, and it grinds the argument to a halt.

“Now, I will be testing something.” She steps closer to Parys, the small taps of her gentle walking clashing with her decisive tone. “Do not interrupt me.”

“But Lady Rhea—” He stops, and while she can’t turn her head to see, she’s confident there’s a certain heavy glare in his direction. “V-very well.”

There’s more silence. She doesn’t know to interpret it at first, and the more she’s opting to consider it the more she preferred the shouting to all the things her mind keeps wanting to say, until she suddenly feels a hand pressed to her arm. It feels strangely cold, too cold in her mind to be from a human. Perhaps her thoughts have gotten so vivid that she has hallucinations. Such a thing has happened to her before, back when she was trapped and alone.

“The warmth of Chevalier…”

Wait, is that _Rhea’s_ hand?

“Seteth.” Indeed, if the closeness of this voice is any indicator, that is the Archbishop’s hand resting on her. “Do you recall how historians referred to those with a Major Crest of Chevalier?”

“A-as hot-blooded, I believe.”

“Yes, though not because of anger.” She’s speaking so oddly softly, for how harsh and cold she was before. “Because of warmth. A unique kind, that even fevers could not hold similarities to.”

“I, erm, suppose this student has such warmth?”

“Indeed–and I have good authority from Professor Hanneman that there was no… artificial interference, causing such. This is deep within her very blood, held from the moment she was born.”

She’s not quite sure what any of this means. She’s confident ‘artificial interference’ doesn’t mean nice things in terms of crests, but is that something that happens? Surely, people don’t just have crests thrown into them willy-nilly?

“Now, I was not told of her punishment until recently.” Rhea’s hand leaves, and the sound of her footsteps back are heard. “I will be finding out why that is on my own terms–but until then, I must make it official that a mere student, who cannot possibly be a traitor like Tomas was, should not be treated like this. _Am I clear on that?_”

“I…” Stuttering like a man blatantly caught in his own tongue, he gulps, already in the midst of walking off. “Of course, Lady Rhea. I will inform the executioner immediately.”

_Executioner._

Oh.

Parys’ head spins once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i keep re-reading future chapters like "i feel like i'm mischaracterizing the church as being too kind" as if i did not create a situation in which parys was going to get guillotined without the leader even knowing
> 
> anyways wow it's super convenient that the DLC chevalier-haver is a constantly smiling guy who refuses to wear a shirt in the winter because otherwise i would look like just the biggest dumbass on the planet by jumping the gun on this


End file.
